Ep. #111 - SEASON 5 PREMIERE! One Battle After Another & Barbie - When Good Directors GO BAD

Welcome to the launch of our epic 5th season on Fabulous Film & Friends! This is the big one! The one that everyone will be talking about for years to come. 

Why? Because this is the episode where I finally get to trash the Barbie movie as we dive into the idea of “When Good Directors Go Bad.”

Inspired by the recent release of 2025’s Paul Thomas Anderson/ Leonardo DiCaprio domestic terror extravaganza One Battle After Another which also stars Benicio Del Toro, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, Regina Hall, Tony Goldwyn, Alana Haim and Sean Penn, we’re going to analyze just went wrong with this promising cinematic spectacle and compare it to another creative disaster that should’ve been an artistic and thematic slam dunk considering its pedigree, 2023’s Barbie directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Ariana Greenblatt, Simu Liu, Rhea Perlman and Will Ferrell.  

I’m your host Gino Caputi and returning to their mics pretty much right where they left them last season are little sis’ Roseanne Caputi and actor photobug Gordon Alex Robertson. 

Alex, you’re going to start this season out of the hot seat again as Roseanne is going to continue to thrill us with factoids about the directors in question 

Hit us again with the facts, Teach! 

Before we sharpen the bayonets and light the fuses: the synopses. 

Barbie follows the titular blonde doll as she awakes blissfully in the female run Barbie Land each day, ignoring her supposed boyfriend Ken, and partying with her fellow Barbies all night. One night during a sensationally choreographed and costumed dance party, she has an existential crisis about mortality and develops flat feet, causing her to leave Barbieland on a journey to “the real world” to find the source of her angst. Realizing her depressed feelings stem from a psychic connection to her original owner, Gloria, Barbie reconnects with Gloria and Gloria’s daughter and the trio travel back to Barbieland.  Upon their return, however, they are dumbfounded to find that Ken has taken over and has brainwashed all the other Barbies into subservience to him and his fellow Kens. A battle of the sexes ensues. 

One Battle After Another loosely adapts Vineland, a novel by Thomas Pynchon. It follows Bob Ferguson, a bomb expert drawn into the terrorist group the French 75. Amid the group’s revolutionary chaos, Bob fathers a daughter named Willa with the fiery tempered and uncontrollable Perfidia Beverly Hills. Perfidia also has a complicated relationship with the mannered and single-minded Colonel Steven Lockjaw. She is soon caught during a botched bank robbery, and Lockjaw strikes a deal with her, leading her to name names.

Years later, after most of his French 75 cohorts have been hunted down by Lockjaw, Bob is still on the run in Northern California with Willa. But Lockjaw finds and captures Willa so Bob must confront the unstoppable colonel for once and for all. 

Where did these two talented filmmakers go off the rails? 

Find out!

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