The Best Movies of 2025 Have One Thing in Common

In Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, Gil Scott-Heron’s 1971 spoken-word song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” serves as both a secret password and background noise. The members of the defunct resistance group the French 75 use its lyrics as a call-and-response sign and countersign: If you know what comes after “Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction,” you must be one of the good guys. But when former revolutionary Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), who has resurfaced after 15 years in hiding, tries to reach out to his old comrades, Scott-Heron’s song is the music he hears when they put him on hold. What was once an anthem about opposing the numbing effects of popular culture has been consumed by it, a golden oldie you might absently nod your head to in the aisles of a chain drugstore.