Tag Archives: Film Reviews

South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut Continues to Give and Point the Finger

Posted on June 29, 2019 by Andrew Bloom

Blame TV. Blame your parents. Blame movies. Blame society. Hell, blame Canada. But whatever you do, blame something, and quickly, before someone thinks of blaming you.

South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut turns 20 this weekend, and for as much as the movie’s Saddam Hussein-heavy, Celine Dion-referencing take on the world is very much of its time, the film nevertheless captures the ways in which American culture would continue to take deeply entrenched, complex cultural problems, and hunt for convenient scapegoats and easy answers in the years to come. There is no issue too inflammatory, no societal malady too multifaceted, that it cannot be oversimplified and laid at the feet of a readily-available boogeyman.

Continue reading at Consequence of Sound →

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Deadwood: The Movie Returns and Finally Forms a Fucking Government

Posted on May 28, 2019 by Andrew Bloom

It’s 1889, and South Dakota is soon to become the nation’s newest state. With that, the onetime hardscrabble camp of prospectors and cutthroats in Deadwood is being ushered into the future, grumbling but prepared. Picking up ten years after the television series left off, Deadwood: The Movie sees local luminaries like the saloon-owning power broker Al Swearengen and the now-Marshall Seth Bullock having settled into their roles in the town on the cusp of the dreaded-but-long-awaited arrival of law, civilization, and progress.

Continue reading at Consequence of Sound →

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Avengers: Endgame Is an Unprecedented Achievement in Cinema, Not Just Superhero Cinema

Posted on May 4, 2019 by Andrew Bloom

Stop and consider the magnitude of this achievement for a moment. Avengers: Endgame is not just a film. It is not just the “season finale” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is the culmination of eleven years of multifaceted storytelling, somehow managing to balance dozens of characters, tie off story threads that have stretched and intersected over the past decade, and craft a final challenge worthy of being the capstone to this mega-franchise. That it happened at all, let alone that this saga ends on a note so poignant, funny, and exhilarating, is an absolute miracle — or at least, if you’ll pardon the expression, a marvel.

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Captain Marvel Is a Throwback to the Earliest MCU Films, Even as It Breaks New Ground

Posted on March 11, 2019 by Andrew Bloom

Captain Marvel is essentially a “Phase One” MCU film. That’s not a bad thing! The original dose of pre-Avengers movies hit doubles more often than they hit home runs, but each was enjoyable on its own terms and managed to nicely establish its main character. The journeys in these introductory films are clearly meant to be personal ones, as much about a hero becoming who they’re meant to be as they are about defeating some forgettable bad guy. That’s certainly true for Captain Marvel, where the nominally cataclysmic stakes (already diminished by the period setting) take a backseat to the audience getting to know this new character and her path to self-actualization.

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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Captures the Spirit of the Franchise as Captain Kirk Learns to Lose

Posted on March 4, 2019 by Andrew Bloom

Star Trek: The Motion Picture might represent the spirit of Star Trek, with its story of seeking out new life and new civilizations, and its heady science fiction rooted in the space between the personal and the unfathomable. But as I discussed on the We Love to Watch podcast, if The Motion Picture captures Star Trek’s spirit, then The Wrath of Khan captures the franchise’s character. The second theatrical Star Trek film conveys the way these friends and allies bounce off one another, the franchise’s Wagon Train to the Stars adventurism, and the larger-than-life personalities that give color to its futuristic world.

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Green Book Is the Least-Deserving Best Picture Winner in Years

Posted on February 25, 2019 by Andrew Bloom


Green Book is quaint. It is the cinematic equivalent of a Hallmark card on race relations, there to make you feel good, reflect the real world in only the vaguest, gentlest of ways, and then be quickly discarded and forgotten. It is thoroughly lacking in any incisiveness or genuine insight, and its take on racism and transcending divisions is as deep as a thimble. The film’s perspective is limited and provincial at best, and often troubling or even insulting in its oversimplifications.

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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Defines Miles Morales at the Same Time It Defines Spider-Man

Posted on February 7, 2019 by Andrew Bloom


I’ve seen a lot of Spider-Man. From the three versions of the character who’ve graced the silver screen in recent years, to scores of different animated series, to an endless font of video games and shorts and other material, Marvel and its licensees have given us countless versions of The Webhead. Some kept Spidey in New York, while others sent him off into space. Some framed him as an untested kid in high school, while others made him an accomplished young adult. Some narrowed his world to a localized ecosystem of characters and conflicts, and others expanded to encompass the whole of the Marvel Universe.

But all of them starred Peter Parker as Spider-Man. And as I discussed on The Serial Fanaticist Podcast, that process of repeat adaptation can’t help but raise the question — what makes each of these characters Spider-Man as we know him? What is the connective tissue that lets each of these adaptations feel of a piece with one another and recognizable as stories about the same character? Is it just the suit, or the web-slinging, or the quips, or is there something more there?

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Solo: A Star Wars Story Is a Blast as an Adventure Flick, and a Chore as a Character Study

Posted on May 29, 2018 by Andrew Bloom

Solo has the scruffy confidence to be its own film. Of the ten Star Wars movies released so far, it’s the only one that doesn’t directly tie into the events of the main saga. That alone makes it interesting and laudable as the first real silver screen step of Star Wars ceasing to be a series and starting to be a “cinematic universe.”

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