Movie reviews are a dime a dozen; does the world really need another? Yet every once in a while Hollywood makes a movie so addlebrained that you feel like you have to say something, not to praise it or to condemn it, but to express wonder that the cultural artifact could come into existence. One Battle After Another is such a film.

For days I kept trying to review it, and failing. It had struck me as being possibly the most morally and historically confused film I’d ever seen, but at the same time, almost nostalgically so.

Oh, the irony! Knowing, winking, Postmodernism has now been out of fashion long enough that I couldn’t place it. It felt like the time I encountered lychee on a pizza. What the heck is that flavor? It’s so familiar? Of course it is familiar–the movie turns out to be based on a Thomas Pynchon novel (Vineland.)

There’s something poignant about it, like when you watch an old movie and see 1980’s artwork on the walls. Who imagined then that the very concept of Postmodernism would so quickly become obsolete, like the old dinosaurs’ way of talking about the new world of the weaselly little mammals we now call memes.

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