If ‘One Battle After Another’ is what passes for the best movie of the year, then the problem isn’t the audience. The problem is the Academy.
PublishedMarch 18, 2026 8:40 PM EDT•UpdatedMarch 18, 2026 8:40 PM EDT
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Chris “Mad Dog” Russo has no patience for Hollywood nonsense.
After Sunday night’s Oscars, Russo came out firing on First Take, unloading on this year’s Best Picture winner, “One Battle After Another,” and saying what plenty of normal people were probably thinking: the movie stunk.
While entertainment writers and the obnoxious movie guys at The Ringer spent the week lauding this year’s Oscar slate, Russo torched the winning film as overhyped garbage and used it as the perfect example of everything wrong with the Academy Awards right now.
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“Who came up with the idea that now we’re gonna have 10 possibilities for Best Picture of the year?” Russo barked on Wednesday’s First Take. “It used to be five. Now they’ve got 10?
“So in other words, then, there are 10 movies that are qualified as an Oscar Award winner?” Russo asked rhetorically. “No, they’re not.”
WATCH:
The Academy expanded the Best Picture field to 10 nominees under the guise of broadening the field, but what it has really done is water down the honor and make room for films that would have never sniffed the award back when the category actually meant something. Then came the knockout punch.
Russo zeroed in on “One Battle After Another,” the film that somehow walked away with Best Picture.
Paul Thomas Anderson and Sara Murphy with cast and crew accept the Best Picture award for “One Battle After Another” onstage during the 98th Oscars. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
“The movie stunk. It was stupid. It didn’t make any sense,” Russo groaned. “Sean Penn has an incredible car accident, and he walks out alive, and then they kill him with some vents… I don’t care about the spoiler. You don’t want to see it.”
That’s the beauty of Mad Dog. While everyone else is afraid to offend the Letterboxd crowd or the “cinema is supposed to challenge you” crowd, Russo is perfectly willing to say the obvious: just because a movie is chaotic, dark, artsy, or self-important doesn’t make it good.
And he didn’t stop there.
Russo also brought up last year’s heavily praised “Anora,” another critical darling that left him cold.
“I said it last year, the movie was even worse,” Russo said. “That was about the Russian oligarch, the stripper — that movie stunk on ice.”
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While the Academy pats itself on the back with marathon telecasts and self-congratulatory montages, Russo is wondering what happened to actual moviemaking.
“Where is ‘From Here to Eternity,’ for crying out loud? How about ‘The African Queen?’ How about ‘The Apartment’ with Jack Lemmon?” Russo asked. “That’s moviemaking. That is ‘The Godfather,’ calling out and killing people and getting tired, that’s what you want to see.”
Instead of legendary storytelling, viewers now get a six-hour ceremony built around films most Americans have never seen and, judging by Russo’s review of “One Battle After Another,” probably wouldn’t want to.
“You’ve got to sit there for six hours while they show you highlights of the 10 movies,” Russo lamented. “It’s two o’clock in the morning, I’ve watched sports all day… and I’m sitting here trying to figure out what’s this or that or what?”
“Let’s do away with that,” Russo concluded. “Five movies!”
He’s right.
If “One Battle After Another” is what passes for the best movie of the year, then the problem isn’t the audience. The problem is the Academy.
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