The billionaires win, audiences lose although some will think they win.
More monopoly, less diverse approaches to storytelling and less chances to tell stories in general.
Regulations should prevent that - but not in these times of unashamed greed destroying everything that can be milked.
Here in The Netherlands it’s Sinterklaas (and also proberly in Belgium and Germany, but I am not sure!), so I gave myself something fun and nice and lots of candy ofcourse!
Looks splendid, fijne Sinterklaas!
All of the studio sales are destructive. The more concentrated all of the smaller studios become under the banners of the larger ones, the less choice we have and the more money we’ll have to part with in order to have it.
I’ve already given up my Netflix subscription, but I can’t wait to see how much of a price hike they’re going to have in order to try to recoup some of the money they’re spending on this.
All happening in a year when the top two awards contenders are studio-produced movies of original and challenging material–SINNERS and ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER. Warner Bros. will not make their likes again.
And both were not really that great anyway…
Imagine the quality from now onwards.
Warner Bros. output this decade has been abysmal. Not sure that Netflix can really make it much worse than it already has been.
Abysmal? That seems unfair. Which movies do you mean?
I thought they were both superb. SINNERS is an amazing amalgam of horror film and musical. Ryan Coogler’s mastery of the music sequences recalls Minnelli and Donen in terms of mise en scene. He is also able to integrate the music into the both the narrative action of the film, and the larger cultural narrative.
As for OBAA, my second screening revealed just how brilliantly edited it is. On my first viewing, I was so busy following the narrative(s) that I missed how exquisitely crafted it is. The film is like a double helix–two father-daughter narratives entwined with two narratives of resistance. Another double: Anderson’s simultaneous critical and celebratory treatment of his characters and their behaviors.
In The New Yorker, Richard Brody writes that while many of last year’s best films “lost none of their abstract wonders when seen on small screens at home. This year’s movies have been different: the best of them have brought old-fashioned, sensory spectacle back to the movies, albeit in new ways. Movies as immediately eye-catching attractions, built to thrill with size and scale and scope, follow in a venerable tradition of enticing viewers to movie theatres for experiences inaccessible via home viewing. In this regard, the makers of some of the year’s most substantial films are reproducing razzle-dazzle strategies that, in recent times, have largely been the province of commerce-striving blockbusters . . . What the immensity and the sensory intensity of these movies evoke is something of a paradox: not fantasy or distraction but a confrontation with the power dynamics of public life.”
Brody mentions the movies of the 1950s, and both films remind me of the work of Ford, Wilder, Mankiewicz, Sirk, and other directors in that decade, who produced mass entertainment that was also culturally engaged on a deep level.
As Europe is offered an (unsolicited) warning about “civilizational erasure,” and blood-and-soil ideology gains traction in the United States, SINNERS and ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER announce that movies can provide great entertainment, bring the formal elements of cinema to new heights, and address present cultural and social issues in daring and confrontational ways even in dark times.
Exquisitely argued. And while I did not like OBAA aside from its technical qualities I do recognize the importance of WB financing and distributing this film.
I still have to check out SINNERS, which seems to also feature impeccable filmmaking, but I wasn’t won over by another Vampire story.
There also might be a disconnect due to the way American and European audiences receive a film.
In regard to OBAA I thought the father-daughter story was clichéd, the usual „family“ trope to redeem the slacker hero. And the totalitarian regime was depicted in the broadest strokes of an action blockbuster where I would have wished for a more insightful characterization.
But US audiences are currently living through that nightmare, so maybe the courage to even use that movie shorthand for topics like those or racism in SINNERS might already be enough.
I enjoyed SINNERS immensely up until the vampire element took over. That said, I was fine with the introduction of those threads into the plot, but not a fan once they took over the plot. In my opinion, everything lost focus and went sideways once the full assault on the nightclub/barn began. And for me personally, it never recovered. I kept wanting to flesh out the Native American vampire kill squad that was introduced earlier in the film. That was a fascinating concept! I have not seen OBAA.
It seems the takeover isn’t a done deal yet after all…*
*Though Netflix already sent out mails to inform customers of the soon-to-be expanded backlist and future franchise heavyweights (which they often already have in their catalog, just not for good yet; Potter, Friends so on). Frankly, probably not a huge difference whether Netflix or Paramount pick up Warner.
Thank you SAF, but credit also to Richard Brody, who put me on the trail. I liked OBAA when i first saw it, but he inspired me to watch it again, and take a new approach (link to archived review below. The New Yorker does not allow me to send a gift link).
SINNERS is a musical that happens to have vampires as characters. Every time a vampire is about to feed, Coogler cuts to music. The film’s vampires are not blood suckers–they are culture drainers/appropriators.
That could be true. SINNERS is steeped in Black/Southern culture in the most naturalistic of ways. The mid-credits ending (there is one after it, so stick around), and Delta Slim’s monologue about his encounter with racist police are two of the most moving sequences I have ever seen in a theater, and I know that a significant part of my ability to respond to these scenes/this film is the result of having worked in social services in the Black community, and being married to a Southern Black man–both for decades. To watch the immense machinery of Hollywood movie-making put at the disposal of a people/community who never usually receive such treatment is astounding.
It is cliched–Anderson was not going for psychological realism. As Brody writes: “Anderson, who both wrote and directed the film, suppresses psychological complexity, creating characters who are little more than abstractions. The result is a film that, despite all its intensely realistic and viscerally physical action, is a work of grand symbolic design. The movie is strangely, unusually dialectical within itself—composed of many layers that don’t coalesce or connect but reflect off one another and generate tension. Through all these inconsistencies, absences, dissonances, and contradictions, an overarching coherence emerges.”
This is what I was trying to express earlier about the doubling in the movie. Two father-daughter narratives–Bob & Willa, and Lockjaw & Willa. Two versions of resistance, liberation, and care–French 75 and Sergio St. Carlos. OBAA is dialectic and didactic, with both elements swathed in a cocoon of highest-level Hollywood film-making.
I can see that. In some ways, the rupture that occurs when the vampires appear at the club is what happens when white community/culture comes into contact with Black community/culture–things lose focus and go sideways.
CNN in the hands of Oligarch Ellison?
David Ellison and his father, Larry, whose family is financially backing the deal, are both friendly with the Trump administration. Larry Ellison had already had early conversations with a senior Trump aide about what changes he might want to see at CNN.
As of now CNN is still scheduled to split from Warner. It’s possible Ellison is eager to swallow that too - but he might do it easier if it’s sitting on its own plate.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/business/media/cnn-netflix-warner-bros-discovery-deal.html
Apart from that, best not to nurse illusions about ‘favourable/preferable‘ outcomes for this….
That sounds great - but why did he suppress psychological complexity? Really to achieve „grand symbolic design“?
Could it be that this reviewer just wanted to see something in the film and defended it this way?
I know, critics are showering awards on this film.
I just don’t feel the same way.
I believe that the very subjectivity of art is part of its inherent allure. To not be moved by something that resonates with others forces us to better define and understand why there is a disconnect on our part with the artists’ vision and its end result. We can still appreciate art even when it doesn’t personally touch us in any deep way.
Why not? (apologies for answering a question with a question). The question is akin to asking why Jackson Pollack made non-representational art rather than representational art. A person may prefer representational art or characters with psychological complexity, but one choice is not superior to another, just as rhymed couplets are not superior to free verse.
It is more than just wanting to see something. Abstract characters are a formal element of OBAA’s narrative. Brody, you, and I all agree on at least this fact.
This approach is not to your taste, so, as you note, you don’t like the film. I adore abstraction in art (I know–big surprise), so OBAA hits my sweet spot. On the aesthetic terms OBAA sets for itself as a work of art, it is a tremendous success (as is SINNERS). But both films may fall outside the bounds of taste for particular viewers.
