Reel Corner - November 2025

Novemberber 2025 Issue
Reel Corner by Donne Paine

Hitting the Big Screen

The holidays are a wonderful time to go to the movies.
It’s so much fun gathering up the family and going
to watch a movie on the big screen.

Here are two recommendations from The Reel Corner:

One Battle After Another (R)
Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor,
Chase Infiniti | Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

One Battle After Another is a wild, fast-paced ride—chaotic, satirical, and sharp, as if Dr. Strangelove were mixed with the spirit of 1970s revolutionaries, and the surreal chaos of contemporary protest movements as the film drags viewers through a whirlwind of on-screen action.

The film follows Bob (DiCaprio), an aging, pot-smoking revolutionary, 16 years after his last notorious action. He is quietly raising a teenage daughter off the grid until she is abruptly abducted, reigniting his radical past. The Reel Corner felt flashes of the days of Angela Davis, Patty Hearst, and the Black Panthers as the movie progressed.


This is not a straightforward chase-and-shoot blockbuster, even the car chase scene feels more like roller-coaster hallucinations than traditional action sequences. The film’s geography and timelines are dreamlike and deliberately vague, which seems to fit its symbolic ambitions. There doesn’t seem to be enough time to ask: Who represents the secret society? What exactly are the communication devices? Does the immigrant underground network have a leader? Who were the revolutionary parents of Perfidia?


The comedy woven into this film is dark, punctuated by moments of absurdity and satirical exaggeration. It’s over-the-top and genuinely frightening, as with Major Lockjaw (Penn) who plays a rigid, unsettling authority figure with a bizarre fixation on one of the revolutionaries. Also demonstrated in Bob’s friend Sergio (del Toro), who plays as a sensei both at a karate studio and in the neighborhood running an impressive underground network for immigrants.


One Battle After Another is heavy on symbolism and asks more questions than it answers. The film’s greatest strength is its willingness to push genre boundaries and provoke political thought. Fans of satirical, political-leaning cinema, who enjoy being challenged as much as entertained, will find plenty to discuss after the film. Well-acted and worth seeing.

Kiss of the Spider Woman (R)
Diego Luna, Tonatiuh, Jennifer Lopez
Directed by Bill Condon

Valentin (Luna), a political prisoner, shares a cell with Molina (Tonatiuh), convicted for public indecency. The film depicts the daily conversations between the two cellmates in an Argentine prison. An unlikely bond forms as Molina recounts a Hollywood musical plot starring Latina star Ingrid Luna (Lopez) to get through their incarceration.

Woven with beauty and tragedy, Kiss of the Spider Woman is a politically charged, tragic love story adapted from Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel and its 1992 stage version. The performances are superb! Tonatiuh gives a haunting, Oscar-winning turn opposite Luna, and the film’s theatrical, dreamlike musical sequences of Lopez are strangely beautiful. Her fantastic talent as a singer and dancer are on full display as a blonde Luna. The film is a bold, emotionally raw piece that lingers long after the credits.

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Happy Thanksgiving!
I am grateful to everyone who reads and supports The Reel Corner!
Wishing you a bountiful Thanksgiving filled with joy, blessings,
and cherished moments.
Let’s go to the movies this holiday season!

References: www.imdb.com, www.wikapedia.com, www.nyt.com

Donne Paine, film enthusiast, once lived around the corner from the Orson Wells Theater in Cambridge, Massachu-setts, where her strong interest in films, especially independent ones, began. Supporter of the arts, especially films, she has traveled to local and national film festivals including Sundance, Toronto and Tribeca. There is nothing like seeing a film on the big screen. She encourages film goers to support Hilton Head local theaters, Park Plaza Theater and Northridge. To support her habit of frequent movie going, Donne is a vaccine medicine nurse consultant and also the author of 4 Interview Pillars available on Amazon. See you at the movies!