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About halfway through One Battle After Another, soldiers wearing combat fatigues and brandishing guns break into a convenience store, looking for Willa Ferguson, the movie’s fugitive protagonist, as well as for evidence of illegal immigrants. This is a scene we are all familiar with: the armed entry of infantry into an enemy building. The military hand gestures and codes. The careful scouting of rooms for hostiles. Except, this isn’t Black Hawk Down or the Hurt Locker. We are not in Iraq or Afghanistan. And these soldiers have ‘police’ stitched to their uniform.

We are in ‘Baktan Cross’, USA. The war has come home.

One Battle After Another is a magnificent movie in many ways, most of which are much better expressed by professional critics. The excellent pacing means that despite coming in at 2:40hrs the movie doesn’t feel long. The story is gripping. The characters flawed but interesting, with Leonardo diCaprio, Chase Infiniti, Benicio del Toro and in particular Sean Penn all putting in stellar performances. The cinematography is beautiful, from vertiginous car chases to the carefully curated details in a family home. The minor garnish of magical realism provides for effective symbolism without ever really stretching the bounds of plausibility. The soundtrack is frenetic and of a kind with the movie’s feverish momentum. Watching One Battle After Another is like stepping onto a frantic and relentless rollercoaster. When you finally grind to a halt, you feel exhilarated, confused about what just happened, and wondering if you have to go on the ride again to fully appreciate it.

There is no shortage of excellent scenes in One Battle After Another, but one that stood out most starkly for me is the ‘police’ arriving in the fictional town of Baktan Cross for their womanhunt for Willa Ferguson (Infiniti). In its reminiscence of countless war movies, it shows us a country at war with itself, its military an occupying force on its own soil. This is a movie about the imperial boomerang having fully circled back.

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Every now and then a movie surprises you. That’s not unusual, but I hadn’t expected that movie to be Marvel’s Thunderbolts*. I too am no stranger to ‘Marvel Fatigue’ and have not really been invested in anything after Endgame with the exception of Loki and WandaVision*. When enjoying a movie requires an advanced degree in Marvelology you have lost me. Thunderbolts* only got its viewing as a sort of last hurrah before our Disney+ subscription goes the way of the OG Avengers. So it was a pleasant surprise when it wasn’t just a half-decent superhero movie, but offered an radically interesting perspective on mental health and redemption.

Warning, contains spoilers

Several elements make Thunderbolts* stand out from the recent Marvel fare. For one, it manages to take itself lightly without getting zany. While in the opening scenes we see Yelena Belova (Black Widow’s adopted sister, played by Florence Pugh) at work ‘cleaning up’ some off-the-books lab run by the movies baddie, we simultaneously hear her narrating how even her work cannot fill the emptiness she feels inside. The contrast is poignant, but ends in a lighthearted flourish when visuals and narration synchronize to show us Belova has been talking to a tied-up goon all this time. A goon who clearly has more important things on his mind than an assassin’s existential angst.

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Halfway through Civil War, the protagonists are confronted by an unidentified militia who asks them who they are. He has just casually shot one of their friends, so it is a rather pointed question. “Americans”, answer our reporters. “What kind of Americans”, is the retort, followed by a version of Russian Roulette where hailing from the wrong state means death.

This scene also featured in the movie’s trailer, for obvious reasons. Its visceral depiction of how the unifying signifier ‘American’ has fractured invites the audience to believe this disintegration is not only possible, but plausible. As a trailer this is effective, prompting the viewer to wonder how we got here, with the intent that they go and see the movie to find out. Which makes encoutering this scene again in the movie itself all the more disappointing, because by then, we are still looking for the answer.