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.
In any case, I'm glad to be with you all and grateful for any opportunity to pore over this medium that we love and will continue to love, stubbornly, to its final breath. As will, I'm sure, Steven Soderbergh, who, for all his oft-expressed pessimism about the industry, continues to churn out work that feels like a paragon of wit, elegance, and the kind of all-around savoir faire that we used to associate with Hollywood on a more regular basis.
Great cinema has never died, but there's something particularly heartening about the fact that it survived 2025. Looking back at this turbulent year, rife with the usual industry concerns over the viability of the theatrical experience, young people's slipping attention spans, and Hollywood's overreliance on franchises, unearths a diverse crop of gems. Many of my favorite films were major studio releases-blockbusters, even-that challenged audiences in innovative, surprising ways.