Category Archives: Prestige Pictures

Nomadland: A Film Out of Time, For Our Times

Posted on April 26, 2021 by Andrew Bloom


Nomadland is an unassuming period piece. Its key events take place roughly a decade prior to its release date. You wouldn’t know that, though, beyond a few stray mentions of certain dates and the presence of a few old cell phones. The film centers on the voyages of its titular nomads, who seem removed in time and space from the rest of the world. They get by on parking lot largesse, desert campgrounds, and the other wide spots in the countryside. And the places they inhabit feel weathered and distant enough to seem both ancient and timeless.

And yet, it’s hard to imagine a film more salient for the present moment. Palpable in the very premise of Nomadland is a sense of the things left behind by a society without enough care for the least of us. The parade of precious possessions, pets, and even people cast aside, because there’s no one there to look after them anymore, runs throughout the film. It is, in its way, a blistering indictment of any community that would prompt its citizens to resort to such desperate (if resourceful) measures, for want of other options.

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Parasite Exposes the Real Suckers in a Class-Conscious Thriller

Posted on February 10, 2020 by Andrew Bloom

 
Caution: This review contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Parasite

Parasite wears its themes on its sleeve. Director Bong Joon-ho chronicles the divide between rich and poor, between the class that has to scrape and scrap to make ends meet and the one that lives in careless largesse. He makes the gulf between them massive and eventually deadly. Within the confines of his feature, the wealthy enjoy the privilege of remaining oblivious to that divide and its attendant struggles, while the underclass must fake and fink and fight one another for a small cut of what their social superiors thoughtlessly squander.

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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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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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Arrival Is an Intricate Film that Snaps into Place in its Finale

Posted on September 15, 2017 by Andrew Bloom

Caution: this review contains major spoilers for the film.

It’s hard to talk about Arrival without spoiling the film. So much of what makes it more than just a well-done first contact story is tied up in its later developments. They recontextualize enough of the prior proceedings that trying to discuss the import or quality of the film without taking it as a whole is like trying to give someone directions without letting them know the destination.

But its premise is deceptively straightforward. In the world of Arrival, aliens have come to Earth in twelve ships scattered across the globe. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is a linguist brought by the U.S. Military to a ship located in Montana, in an attempt to help humanity communicate with this extraterrestrial presence. With the help of theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) and a buffer provided by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker), Banks slowly but surely finds ways to speak with these seemingly unknowable beings, with the American team alternatively working with and against similar groups around the world attempting the same.

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Moonlight Is the Most-Deserving Best Picture Winner in Years

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Andrew Bloom

Growing up is hard enough. Figuring out who you are, figuring out the balance between what’s deep and held fast in your soul and what you’re willing to share with the world, is a difficult endeavor under the best of circumstances. Coupling that with the difficulties of living in a household of addiction, of a sexual preference that earns you added scorn, turns an already fraught journey into a cruel and unforgiving one.

Despite the harshness of these troubles, Moonlight finds the beauty forged within that crucible, the kindnesses large and small and the transcendent moments and connections, that give a sweet, put upon young boy something to hold onto as he becomes a man. Despite the aesthetic pleasures of Moonlight’s gorgeously-shot scenes, it is, at times, an ugly, dispiriting film, but ultimately a life-affirming one. It centers on the unique challenges of its protagonist, struggling to define himself, and finding his way among the pitfalls and small graces of growing up.

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Hidden Figures Is a Typical Oscar Movie with an Atypical Focus

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Andrew Bloom

You’ve seen Hidden Figures before. Maybe you haven’t seen this exact movie — about how three unduly unheralded African American women helped NASA in the early 1960s — but if, like me, you dutifully watch the slate of Oscar-nominated films year after year, then within ten minutes you’ll already know this movie by heart.

It features a gutsy but unorthodox protagonist trying to make a dent in a system that marginalizes and ignores her. It’s a period piece, with enough obvious dialogue, details, and cameos from well-known historical figures to let the audience know exactly when the story is taking place, with plenty of opportunities for the viewer to say, “My, how far we’ve come.” It has supporting characters facing challenges that mirror the protagonist’s, shining more light on the ways in which the order of the day affected those who were quietly fighting to maintain their place in it. And it has the standard untold story/historical injustice angle, intended to imbue the film with an extra bit of triumph and tragedy, all unleashed with a heavy dose of Hollywood mythmaking.

The difference, and the thing that distinguishes Hidden Figures from the likes of The Imitation Game, Dallas Buyers Club, and other recent Oscar nominees that play in the same space is that it uses the power of that formula in support of a woman of color. At a time when the world of film is still lingering in the shadow of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, it’s encouraging that Taraji P. Henson is cast as the star of a movie that follows the Oscar-approved blueprint and succeeds at the box office and the awards table in the process. It’s just a shame that the film’s artistic merit can’t match its social merit.

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The Solid-but-Spiritless Success of Spotlight

Posted on February 29, 2016 by Andrew Bloom


It’s hard to say how much knowing what happens in a story affects our enjoyment of it. We live in the age of the spoilerphobe, where nerds like me abandon social media in the days leading up to a major release for fear of having significant plot points or major twists revealed too soon. But in Shakespeare’s day, everyone more or less knew the ending ahead of time, and the lack of novelty didn’t lessen the draw. That’s a reminder that what the story is need not, and arguably should not, overshadow how the story is told.

Which is to say, I’m not sure how much the greater effect of Spotlight was lost on me given that I already knew a decent amount about the molestation scandal within the Catholic Church that played out in the newspapers and on our television screens for years after the time depicted in the film. The movie is, if not exactly a mystery, then certainly a story of the intrepid reporters of the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team starting a small investigation and slowly but surely uncovering how widespread a pathology there was.

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Brooklyn and the Merits of Charm and Simplicity in Storytelling

Posted on February 25, 2016 by Andrew Bloom

Caution: This review contains major spoilers for Brooklyn.

Dan Harmon, the creator of Community, is known for several things — his trademark bottle of vodka, his tendency to spill his guts to audiences full of strangers, and also his Story Circle. The Story Circle is a device that Harmon uses to create nearly any story he writes or supervises. It consists of eight steps for how a narrative ought to progress under his watch: 1. A character is in a zone of comfort; 2. But they want something; 3. They enter an unfamiliar situation; 4. Adapt to it; 5. Get what they wanted; 6. Pay a heavy price for it; 7. Then return to their familiar situation; 8. Having changed.

Brooklyn is basically “Story Circle: The Movie.” Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) may not have the best life in Ireland, but she is certainly comfortable there. And yet she hopes and wants for a better life than any she could expect to have where she grew up. So she moves to Brooklyn, and the unfamiliarity of her new situation is hammered home in every interaction she has, from the coaching she receives from a more experienced Irish immigrant that she meets on the boat to America, to the snotty comments she hears from the more experienced residents in her boarding house who better understand the local culture, to the homesickness that plagues her in her quieter moments.

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The Martian Is a Feel-Good Movie that Earns Every Bit of the Feeling

Posted on January 27, 2016 by Andrew Bloom


Despite a number of well-crafted elements, the success or failure of The Martian absolutely depended on Matt Damon’s performance in the lead role. It’s true that, in contrast to spiritual predecessors like Gravity and Castaway, the film was not a one-man show, instead featuring a murderer’s row of stellar supporting players. What’s more, its narrative thrills were not limited to its protagonist’s adventures on Mars; The Martian told an equally compelling story of what was happening back home.

But Damon’s Mark Watney, and his lonely trials and tribulations on a desolate planet, were the lifeblood of the film, commanding the lion’s share of its run time and focus. That meant that for much of the movie, Damon alone had to convey his character’s distress, his resolve, his humor, and his humanity, with no one but the camera to talk to. And despite that handicap, he succeeded with flying colors. Few major roles share the degree of difficulty of Damon’s here, where the main character spends much of the film in solitude, with little in the way of major plot developments or action to maintain the energy of the picture, and the performance Damon delivered with that backdrop more than lived up to the challenge.

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