There’s no one way to measure when a movie enters the cultural bloodstream — I mean, when it does that as powerfully as a shot of heroin. But when it happens, you can feel it. It used to happen a lot, but it’s rarer in the world we live in today, which is awash in a universe of content, most of it splintered into separate silos. The phrase “mass culture” used to be synonymous with “hit television” or “blockbuster movie,” but even those things aren’t the dominating, all-eyes-on-this, collective-attention-grabbing forces they once were. All of which makes Paul Thomas Anderson ’s “ One Battle After Another ” a grand throwback, the all-too-rare movie that has the chance to dominate the cultural conversation.

Let’s be clear about why that could happen. “One Battle After Another” is a movie

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