July 2020 – Page 2 – PopCult Reviews

Short Film Showcase #5

Strasbourg 1518 (2020, directed by Jonathan Glazer)

Jonathan Glazer was inspired by an incident in Strasbourg, Germany where the townspeople overcome with a dance affliction, flailing themselves wildly and claiming to not be in control. The condition spread like a sickness and many were caught up in the frenzy. Glazer uses this and frames the same illness against our present-day conflicts. People are growing weary of remaining holed up in their homes. Governments are lacking leadership and kicking the can down the ladder of responsibility until they simply tell citizens it’s all up to them to figure out. Here in the United States, social unrest has come to a boiling point with a desperate President unable to provide a way forward and an opposition party that thinks doing nothing is their path to victory. The images in this short are beautifully reflective of the explosion of emotion and repetition in our daily lives. It’s no coincidence that the first words we hear are “How are you?” A24 is currently streaming Strasbourg 1518.

Movie Review – Threads

Threads (1984)
Written by Barry Hines
Directed by Mick Jackson

If you’ve spent any amount of time perusing YouTube for the 1970s/80s British Public Service Announcements, then you know they are some of the most horrific content produced for television. They are unflinchingly direct and severe in how they communicate warnings. It was that this sense of not holding information back that led to the BBC commissioning the filming of Threads. Mick Jackson had done a short film about Armageddon and the result of a nuclear war a couple of years earlier, but the BBC wanted a full-length feature to air on their network.

Movie Review – Stalker

Stalker (1979)
Written by Boris Strugatsky & Arkady Strugatsky
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

Today I begin a week-ish long series called Worlds on the Edge of Chaos. My thought behind this series of movies is to look at apocalyptic films that aren’t Mad Max-ian, deep in the primal collapse of mankind. These movies are intended to be more philosophical about collapse, with characters existing on the precipice between the world that was and falling into the oblivion of the end. These pictures will vary wildly in tone and characters, but they will all explore the themes that arise when we confront the end of civilization as we know it. Many of these movies present their collapse with a melancholy quiet proposing the old adage that the world will end with a whisper.

Movie Review – George Washington

George Washington (2000)
Written & Directed by David Gordon Green

I have noticed in these reviews for the Visions of the American South series that few of the directors are actually from the region. Only Billy Bob Thornton and David Gordon Green are actually from the areas where their films take place. Because of that, I think these are the most naturalistic movies. That doesn’t mean they aren’t made with a stylistic flourish. In the case of George Washington, the film is almost like a visual poem. George Washington is also the first film in our series to prominently feature Black characters.

Movie Review – The Apostle

The Apostle (1997)
Written & Directed by Robert Duvall

I first saw The Apostle approximately twenty-two years ago. I checked it out from the local public library, where I was working at the time and absolutely loved from the first viewing. I mentioned earlier in this series how author Flannery O’Connor referred to the South as a “Christ-haunted landscape.” Robert Duvall furthers this by exploring a character who lives in seeming constant open dialogue with God. He implores the deity for guidance as often as he rages at him for life events the man cannot understand.

Comic Book Review – Young Justice Book Two

Young Justice Book Two (2018)
Reprints Young Justice #8-17, Young Justice 80-Page Giant #1, Young Justice in No Man’s Land #1, Supergirl #36-37, and Young Justice Secret Files #1
Written by Peter David, Chuck Dixon, Scott Beatty, Beau Smith, Jay Faerber, Lary Stucker, and Peter J. Tomasi
Art by Todd Nauck, Leonard Kirk, Angel Unzueta, Coy Turnbull, Andy Kuhn, Justiniano, Sergio Cariello, Tommy Lee Edwards, Ryan Sook, Keron Grant, and Dietrich Smith

Woo boy! Young Justice has not turned out to be what I expected it would be. And this is not a good thing. I have always bristled at most superhero books with comedy, save the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League run. It takes a deft touch to balance humor and superheroics so that the stakes of the conflict don’t devolve into silliness. This is why Deadpool and Harley Quinn have just never appealed to me despite multiple attempts to read runs by different creative teams. Peter David chose to lean into the humor of a teen superhero book for better or worse.

The Cinema of Misery

Doesn’t the world feel exceptionally shitty these days? Would you like to watch a movie that will lift your spirits? Well, that’s not this list. When I originally planned this list, COVID-19 cases were going down, and it seemed like the BLM uprisings were pushing back at power semi-successfully. As I publish this, we have soaring case numbers and now federal stormtroopers acting in outright violation of the Constitution in Portland, Oregon. Just yesterday, political commentator Michael Brooks passed away suddenly at the age of 37. Brooks was in my home every day through his work on The Majority Report and his own podcast. Add to this anxiety surrounding schools opening back up soon while the virus rages, and I can safely say my head is not in a good space these days. Seems like the perfect time for such a list.

Movie Review – Sling Blade

Sling Blade (1996)
Written & Directed by Billy Bob Thornton

One of the notions observed about the concept of Family at the end of the 20th century & especially in the 21st is that it is no longer the people whom you are born into but the people you choose to populate your life with. Sling Blade is a movie about that kind of a family, focusing on one particular member and how they navigate their role in the group. This film is the evolution of a one-man show into a short film and finally the feature film we review here. This story meant a lot of Billy Bob Thornton so much that he would devote so large a portion of his life to playing a singular character. He becomes lost in this character, and my wife didn’t realize it was Thornton until the end credits rolled.

TV Review – The Best of The Twilight Zone Part Two

Eye of the Beholder (Season Two, Episode Six)
Original airdate: November 11th, 1960
Written by Rod Serling
Directed by Douglas Heyes

Janet Tyler lays in a hospital bed, her face covered in bandages. When a nurse comes to check on her, the patient laments about her hideous visage, the problem that brought her here. The doctors have done plastic surgery, but everyone is worried that Janet’s disfigurement is so severe there is not much they can do. This is one of those episodes that you’ll likely know the twist for if you are pop-culture savvy, but it doesn’t diminish the impact of the story.

Movie Review – Rambling Rose

Rambling Rose (1991)
Written Calder Willingham
Directed by Martha Coolidge

The role of women in Southern culture is a complex one, and as a white man, I will not be able to adequately convey what it is like from my perspective. Rambling Rose, though, is a film that gets somethings right but so much else wrong, like problematically wrong. I sat stunned within the first few moments of this movie, and throughout the rest of it at how tone-deaf and overly melodramatic so much of the story becomes. The female character at the center of the picture really has no voice, and instead, the narrative is shaped by an adolescent boy that lusts after Rose. There’s an attempt to have him learn a lesson about women, but it’s muddied with troublesome archaic thinking.