‘Concessions’ is a film that will make you feel like you have travelled back in time. Not however in a comfortable haze of cinematic, sepia-tinged nostalgia, but rather on a perplexing and uncomfortably laugh-free journey that will leave you thinking, ‘why have I just watched a movie that would have seemed dated if it had been released 25-years ago?’
Written and directed by first time filmmaker Mas Bouzidi, the film takes place at the Royal Alamo Cinema during it’s final day and night before it closes its doors for the last time. Hunter (Rob Riordan) has worked there since he left school, and now needs to figure out what he’s going to do with his life. Lorenzo (Jonathon Price) has an offer of a football scholarship, but carries his own doubts about what comes next. As for the manager, Luke (Steven Ogg), the Alamo has been part of his life forever—as it was his father who originally opened it—and he is struggling to cope with the sense of failure now that it’s closing.
There’s a mournful yet playful tone to the early scenes, coupled with a warm 16mm aesthetic, and the acoustic needle drops help create a feel of early Wes Anderson. However this quickly gives way to the influence of another giant of US indie cinema, and it is impossible to talk about ‘Concessions’ without mentioning him. That person is Kevin Smith. We’ve got disenfranchised yet overly verbose slackers working minimum wage jobs, chatting shit about pop culture, and dealing with annoying customers. They hate their lives but are too afraid to do anything about it. And they occasionally engage with the stoners who hang around outside (one of whom doesn’t speak). Sound familiar?
Now look, I’m fully aware that there is a 90s revival in full swing right now—whether it’s the clothes people are wearing, or the bands we’re all going to see. Maybe 90s style slacker hangout movies are due for a comeback too. And I get that as well as the film being a love letter to cinema, it is also a love letter to the films and filmmakers that inspired the director. I’m just not convinced we need a workplace comedy in 2025 built around disgruntled employees having tiresome conversations about Star Wars.
The film is nostalgic for nostalgia, and never establishes a convincing sense of time or place, or consistency of tone. It’s clearly set in the present—streaming services exist, and have reshaped the way audiences engage with movies, for better or worse—yet at the same time, everyone looks, and talks, and acts like this is 1995. Bouzidi wants to craft this elegiac ode to a forgotten era where the movie-theatre was the central hub of people’s cultural lives, but keeps consistently undermining this with prosaic pop culture references, cinephile philosophising, and crass frat boy humour. What, you mean like a Kevin Smith film? Well yes, but just not as good.
Exploring the death of cinema, and what this means both culturally and for the people who will lose their livelihoods as a result, is where ‘Concessions’ is at its strongest. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the confidence to spend more time with the main characters and themes, instead cutting away to a wider ensemble and various skits that are far less interesting. This includes Michael Madsen, in one of his final screen roles playing a washed up stuntman who comes to the Alamo to watch the last film he worked on. His tragic recent passing brings this otherwise hollow Tarantino riff an unintended poignancy.
