Continuing a look at my favorite movie music scenes of 2025…

Paul Thomas Anderson has always had a gift for the perfect needle drop, whether it’s the wall-to-wall 70s and 80s pop hits of Boogie Nights, Shelly Duvall’s plaintive ‘He Needs Me’ in Punch-Drunk Love, or Neil Young’s gorgeous ‘Journey Through the Past’ in Inherent Vice.

He does it again a few times in One Battle After Another but the one that sticks with me the most comes after the film’s extended prologue when we jump ahead 16 years.

Teyana Taylor’s fugitive revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills has fled the country, leaving her husband and baby daughter behind. Anderson gives us a smash cut from the infant’s face to the same girl as a 16-year-old, Willa, played by Chase Infiniti.

Perfidia narrates, “Sixteen years later, the world had changed very little,” and Steely Dan’s ‘Dirty Work’ kicks in as Willa practices a karate routine. We meet Sensei Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio Del Toro) in a tender close-up. Then on to her father, Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio), preparing for a conference with Willa’s history teacher by hitting a weed pipe in his car.

The whole sequence has a gentle sadness that contrasts to the cacophony of the film’s opening act. We see Willa’s resourcefulness and grit, we see that Bob is a bit of a mess but that he cares deeply about his daughter.

And somehow, this atypical 1972 Steely Dan song about a man regretting his affair with a married woman is the perfect backdrop.