December 2019 – PopCult Reviews

My Favorite Books I Read in 2019

Friday Black: Stories by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Ever since I read Civilwarland in Bad Decline and Pastoralia, both by George Saunders, I have been searching for that sort of literary voice, and I think I’ve found it in Adjei-Brenyah. The most obvious connection is the short “Zimmer Land,” a theme park where people come to act out their aggressive fantasies while mostly ethnic minority employees (wearing high tech protective gear) become human punching bags. “The Finkelstein Five” continues that exploration of contemporary race conflict as the narrator becomes caught up in the reaction to the acquittal of a child murderer who took the lives of four black children with a chainsaw. There’s a duo of stories about the Thunderdome like conditions of a future shopping mall, where customers kill each other over insulated parkas. My favorite was the closing story, “Through the Flash” and it brought me to tears while reading it. That tale features a teenage girl caught in a dystopian time loop where she and her neighbors have lived the same days for thousands of years. It was an oddly hopeful and heartbreaking story. Of all the fiction I’ve read this year Friday Black gets my most enthusiastic recommendation.

Movie Review – Old Dogs

Old Dogs (2009)
Written by David Diamond & David Weissman
Directed by Walt Becker

How does one end a year and a film series about forgotten terrible movies? Well, the best way, in my opinion, is by subjecting yourself to one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. Yes, this is the second time I’ve watched Old Dogs. Do you see what I do for you people? Old Dogs came out a decade ago, a film that marked the movie duo we’ve always wanted to see, John Travolta & Robin Williams…? This is a film with so many strange things happening on the screen, and I have some theories about what the picture was originally going to be. Let’s not waste a single moment more.

Movie Review – Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2019)
Written & Directed by Bi Gan

There are two starkly separated halves to this film. The first half is nothing too remarkable, some beautiful cinematography and a noir story that will feel very familiar, no real surprises. The second half is a shock; the visuals are the focus, yet somehow they still keep the narrative going. Bi Gan takes some significant risks in this latter section, banking his entire film on what could easily have just been a gimmick. Instead, he turns this into a remarkable feat, something rarely attempted in filmmaking, but Bi Gan sticks the landing.

Movie Review – Lucy in the Sky

Lucy in the Sky (2019)
Written by Noah Hawley, Elliott DiGuiseppi, & Brian C. Brown
Directed by Noah Hawley

In 2007, NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak was arrested for the attempted kidnapping of another female astronaut who was involved with a mutual male colleague. Lisa brought a BB pistol, pepper spray, and a wig to the Orlando International Airport, where she assaulted the woman. The piece of this story that got the most traction in the news at the time is that Nowak wore adult diapers so as not delay her arrival time. This is what Lucy in the Sky is loosely based on, an incident does occur at an airport in the finale. There is a lot you could do with this story, delving into the psychology of Lisa Nowak, trying to figure out how someone so accomplished, one of few humans to escape the bonds of Earth, had such a profound and public mental breakdown. Director Noah Hawley decided he would rather play around with aspect ratio than tell that sort of story.

Book Update – November/December 2019

Fiction

Insurrections: Stories by Rion Amilcar
I had heard a lot of hype about Amilcar after his latest collection, “The World Doesn’t Require You,” was published earlier this year. I went back and read his first anthology and was a little underwhelmed. When Scott is at his best, he channels the urgency of Flannery O’Connor. Most of the stories fell flat for me, and it did cause me to move his new book down my reading list in favor of other titles. My favorite story in this collection was “A Friendly Game,” which follows a high school student caught up in an incredibly toxic male friendship. This is paralleled with the story of a mentally ill homeless woman in their neighborhood who lost her son years earlier, which led to her breakdown. The antagonist in the story is great and really gets you inside of what the main character is having to deal with daily.

Movie Review – Monos

Monos (2019)
Written by Alejandro Landes & Alexis Dos Santos
Directed by Alejandro Landes

Above the clouds, on a Colombian mountaintop, a small group of teenage commandos kills time while protecting their hostage, an American doctor. We are immediately thrust into a mythic, alien landscape in the opening frames of Monos. The music adds to the slow, foreboding atmosphere, hinting at the Lord of the Flies-esque finale that will inevitably come. This immediate move to set the mood is a brilliant choice and quickly brings us into this mysterious, strange world.

Best of the 2010s – My Favorite Films of 2019

The Farewell (directed by Lulu Wang)
From my full review:
Wang is very obviously influenced by contemporary European cinema in her shot composition, specifically the work of Ruben Ostlund. There are lots of intentional off-center shots with characters cut off on the sides of the frame or barely peeking up from the bottom. Wang uses her composition to bring out the humor and poignancy of scenes, for example, allowing an opera-singing performer at the wedding to underscore her cousin’s sloppy drunken crying fit in the middle of the banquet hall. There’s an absolutely fantastic slow-motion medium shot in the third act of the family walking towards the camera that is framed and scored to perfection. For a second film, the technique on display is remarkable. These are not the most dynamic scenes, people sitting in a room and talking, yet the cinematography is gorgeous.

TV Review – Succession Season One

Succession Season 1 (HBO)
Written by Jesse Armstrong, Tony Roche, Jonathan Glatzer, Anna Jordan, Georgia Prichett, Susan Soon He Stanton, Lucy Prebble, and Jon Brown
Directed by Adam McKay, Mark Mylod, Adam Arkin, Andrij Parkeh, Miguel Arteta, and S. J. Clarkson

American television has a history of focusing its dramatic television shows around the wealthy. Look back at programs like Dallas or Dynasty, glamorizing the soap-operatic lifestyle of the rich and powerful. Today, we have “reality” television programs that consider themselves “aspirational,” look at Bravo or E! In the same way, that shows like Duck Dynasty exist to mythologize and push a false narrative of “working class,” the shows about the rich are intended to teach people that these grossly extravagant people earned their money fairly and lead such satisfying, full lives. Writer-director-producer Adam McKay has had enough of glamorizing the rich and decided to make a series that subverts our expectations.

My Favorite Music of 2019

I am still working on finding the right language to use when talking about music, but I still find the best way to share why I love a song or album is to just present you with it. Here are some tracks I listened to a lot this year. There’s some pop music you’ve probably heard mixed with a lot of tracks you probably missed. I’ve also included a few music videos I enjoyed as well.

My Most Anticipated Films of 2019 – A Look Back

Blossoms (dir. Wong Kar-wai)
Changed to a web series, yet to be released.

Brightburn (dir. David Yaorvesky)
Great concept, terrible execution. Check out my review.

Climax (dir. Gaspar Noe)
Some people love it, others despise it. I found it entertaining and wonderfully weird. Check out my review.