Florence Pugh is a woman who knows her potatoes, whether they be big or small. Her career choices have been almost flawless to date, and she can steal scenes in a tiny, supporting role like in Oppenheimer, but she can also utterly dominate a prestige television series that brings one of America’s most famous novels back to the screen.
East of Eden has officially passed 1 billion minutes watched in the United States, earning an enormous 1.162 billion viewing minutes during the week of October 5–11, according to Nielsen. The seven-part Netflix adaptation of John Steinbeck‘s classic novel finished No. 3 on the overall streaming chart, behind Prime Video’s Carrie and Netflix’s Below.
The series takes place over a number of decades in the lives of Cathy (Pugh) and the Trask family, while it’s bookended by the American Civil War and World War I. Over the years, the paths of the Trask family intersect with people like Samuel Hamilton, an Irishman who made his way to California where he raised a family and got to know the land. They also encounter Lee, a Chinese American, whose heart is as big as his intellect, and Faye, a brothel owner who may be her own worst enemy.
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Collider · Best Picture Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Five winners · ten questions · one envelope
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be and what it can do to you. One of them is the film made for the way your mind works, and ten questions will work out which. The nominees
2020Parasite
2023Everything Everywhere All at Once
2024Oppenheimer
2015Birdman
2008No Country for Old Men
Question 01 of 10TONE
01 What kind of film experience are you really after? The best movies do not just entertain. They leave something behind.
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Question 02 of 10THEME
02 Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What is yours?
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Question 03 of 10STRUCTURE
03 How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
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Question 04 of 10VILLAIN
04 What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
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Question 05 of 10ENDING
05 What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
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Question 06 of 10WORLD
06 Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything: mood, stakes, what is even possible.
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Question 07 of 10CRAFT
07 What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature, the element that makes it unmistakable.
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Question 08 of 10PROTAGONIST
08 What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you follow says something about you.
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Question 09 of 10PACE
09 How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint. Others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
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Question 10 of 10AFTERMATH
10 What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
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The envelope, pleaseAnd the Oscar goes to
★ Best Picture, 2020 Parasite Bong Joon-ho, 2019 A film that hides its true intentions until the moment it is ready to reveal them.
You are drawn to films that operate on several levels at once, that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image. From the Collider file
The first film not in the English language to win Best Picture, in the Academy’s
92-year history to that point.
It took four Oscars in one night: Picture, Director, Original Screenplay and International
Feature.
It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2019 by a unanimous jury vote, the first Korean film
to do so.
The Park family’s modernist house was not a location. It was built from scratch on an
outdoor lot.
Reads between the lines Loves a reveal Attention to detail
★ Best Picture, 2023 Everything Everywhere All at Once Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, 2022 A film that refuses to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful.
You want it all, and this one gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is among the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse science fiction, family drama, existential crisis, and an emotional core that sneaks up on you in the middle of the chaos. You respond to ambition. Being overwhelmed is the design, not the side effect, because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what the film is about. From the Collider file
Seven Oscars, including three acting wins for Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee
Curtis.
Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian woman to win Best Actress.
The visual effects were handled by a team of fewer than ten people, most of them
self-taught.
Ke Huy Quan had all but left acting for two decades before this role brought him back.
Wants everything Big swings Soft center
★ Best Picture, 2024 Oppenheimer Christopher Nolan, 2023 A film about the gap between what we can do and what we should do.
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale, films that treat history not as a backdrop but as a force, then place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer sits inside one of the most consequential moments in human history and refuses to look away from it. You want your films to feel important without being self-important, earning their ambition through craft and the gravity of the subject. This one is enormous, complicated, and offers no easy comfort. From the Collider file
Seven Oscars, including Nolan’s first wins for directing and for Best Picture.
Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. both took their first Academy Awards for it.
Kodak engineered a black-and-white 65mm stock that did not previously exist so Nolan could
shoot those sequences on IMAX.
A three-hour, R-rated drama about theoretical physics that passed 950 million dollars
worldwide.
Thinks in decades Scale and weight No easy comfort
★ Best Picture, 2015 Birdman Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2014 A film doing something that probably should not be possible.
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction, where the how of the filmmaking becomes part of the what it is about. Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman, stitched to appear as one continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera make something unlike anything else: a film about creativity, relevance, self-destruction and never quite knowing whether your work means anything at all. From the Collider file
Four Oscars, among them Best Picture and Best Director for Iñárritu.
Emmanuel Lubezki’s win here was the middle of three consecutive cinematography Oscars,
after Gravity and before The Revenant.
Antonio Sánchez’s improvised drum score was ruled ineligible for the score category,
which caused a minor uproar.
The long-take illusion was built from a handful of extended shots joined by hidden cuts.
Formally daring Camera as character Ego and art
★ Best Picture, 2008 No Country for Old Men Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007 A film that treats dread as a form of meaning.
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, refuses to explain itself, and lets unease do the talking. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is about the arrival of a new kind of evil: implacable, arbitrary, and indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of things. It is one of the most tightly controlled films ever made, and that control is the source of the terror. You want your films to haunt you rather than comfort you, and you have no interest in a resolution that would be a lie. From the Collider file
Four Oscars: Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, and Supporting Actor for Javier Bardem.
Adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel, with much of his dialogue carried over
intact.
Carter Burwell’s score runs about sixteen minutes and is nearly inaudible by design.
Roger Deakins was nominated twice that year, for this and The Assassination of Jesse James,
and won for neither.
Trusts silence Dread over answers No tidy endings
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Who’s Involved in ‘East of Eden’?
Pugh stars alongside Christopher Abbott (Poor Things) as Adam Trask, Mike Faist (Challengers) as Charles Trask, Hoon Lee (Banshee) as Lee, Tracy Letts (Ford v Ferrari) as Cyrus Trask, Martha Plimpton (The Goonies) as Faye, Ciarán Hinds (Game of Thrones) as Samuel Hamilton, Joseph Zada (We Were Liars) as Cal Trask, and Joe Anders (Bonus Track) as Aron Trask.
East of Eden has received plenty of praise from critics, particularly for Pugh’s performance and the ambition of Zoe Kazan‘s adaptation. Unlike the famous 1955 movie, which focused on the later chapters of Steinbeck’s novel, the Netflix series gives Cathy a much bigger role and more time to explore her complicated story. Nick Hilton of The Independent described it as “a lush, thoughtful new Netflix mini-series,” while The Guardian called it “brilliant, compelling entertainment,” highlighting the performances and impressive production. Collider’s Therese Lacson was similarly impressed, praising Kazan for creating “a faithful adaptation that still takes risks.”
East of Eden is streaming now exclusively on Netflix, with all seven episodes available.
