Does Hollywood reek of “liberal mustiness”?
One legendary author certainly thinks so, and is pointing to Tinseltown’s latest darling flick as proof of it.
Speaking on his self-named podcast, Bret Easton Ellis — famed author of “American Psycho” — took some time on his most recent episode to share his thoughts on the R-rated “One Battle After Another.”
The film, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, came out Sept. 26 and has been a critical (and somewhat commercial) success.
On movie review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, “One Battle” is sitting on a whopping 95 percent score from reviewers, and a still-impressive 85 percent score from fan reviewers.
According to the New York Times, the film brought in a solid $22.4 million over its opening weekend in North America, but the outlet did note that the film came with an exorbitant price tag hovering in the $200 million range.
Variety noted that beyond that opening weekend, the film has brought in $114 million and counting, and is Anderson’s first film to top $100 million.
The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a crazed, off-the-grid survivalist and former revolutionary whose arch-nemesis suddenly returns to his life, which coincides with his daughter going missing.
WARNING: The following trailer contains multiple instances of vulgar language that viewers may find offensive.
Despite the film’s moderate financial success and booming critical success, Ellis thinks there’s a very good reason for those wins.
Have you seen the movie?
“It’s kind of shocking to see these kind of accolades for — I’m sorry, it’s not a very good movie — because of its political ideology, and it’s so obvious that’s what they’re responding to,” Ellis said on his podcast, according to MovieMaker.
Ellis continued: “Why it’s considered a masterpiece, the greatest film of the decade, the greatest film ever made [is] because it really aligns with this kind of leftist sensibility.”
The famed author also dipped his toes into modern politics to explain the popularity of “One Battle After Another.”
Ellis called the film “a kind of musty relic of the post-Kamala Harris era — that thing everyone gathers around and pretends is so fantastic and so great when it really isn’t, just to make a point …
“There’s a liberal mustiness to this movie that already feels very dated by October 2025. Very dated. And it just doesn’t read the room. You know, it reads a tiny corner of the room, but it does not read what is going on in America.”
According to Variety, when one film critic responded to him by calling the film “important,” Ellis shot back, “No, it is not. It has really not read the room. It has not read the room at all about what’s going on in America.”
Despite the generally glowing praise heaped on this movie (Ellis notwithstanding), at least one conservative outlet agrees with the “American Psycho” author’s assessment.
“It’s a macabre coincidence that ‘One Battle After Another’ opens so soon after the assassination of peaceable conservative debater Charlie Kirk,” wrote National Review‘s Armond White.
“The film undeniably romanticizes political assassination.”
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