Teyana Taylor

One Battle After Another

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Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) aims a rifle

If the characters from Dr Strangelove somehow escaped and eventually found themselves in a Tarantino movie, it might look like One Battle After Another. A 1970s-vibing, magpie-thieving, funny and relentlessly entertaining ride, director Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie is basically one gloriously extended chase with added spiritual input from Hitchcock, the Coens and Paul Greengrass (plus QT). It’s funnier than your average Anderson movie – There Will Be Blood wasn’t notably full of jokes – and happier than usual to paddle in genre waters. The story is based on Pynchon’s novel Vineland, with much diluting by Anderson, and follows a gang of direct action radicals, the French 75, whose campaign of bombing banks and migrant … Read more

A Thousand and One

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Inez out on the streets

Films that watch poor people having a bad time aren’t everyone’s idea of fun and while A Thousand and One walks a familiar path, it does so with a keen knowledge that misery is a turn-off, and even throws in some firecracker performances to help sweeten the pill. Chief among those is Teyana Taylor, in a star-is-born role as Inez, a street skank fresh out of Rikers Island who “kidnaps” her own child, Terry, aged six and in care, and sets out to bring him up while ducking the authorities. Will Inez make it? Will Terry? Starting out in 1994, the story of Inez and Terry is also, to an extent the story … Read more