December 2020 – Page 2 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989)
Written by Ed Naha, Tom Schulman, Stuart Gordon, and Brian Yuzna
Directed by Joe Johnston

There are some movies from my childhood where I wonder if they were as big a deal to the rest of the world as they seemed to me at the time. So often, a lot of movies turn out to be a thing your family owned a copy of, so you watched and rewatched it. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids was actually as big as I remember it as. Its box office returns are the equivalent of $457 million in today’s money. Pretty good for a movie that cost only $18 million to make. It was the directorial debut of Lucasfilm special effects artist Joe Johnston, and it was at the height of Rick Moranis’s career.

Movie Review – Evolution (2001)

Evolution (2001)
Written by David Diamond, David Weissman, and Don Jakoby
Directed by Ivan Reitman

Ivan Reitman is responsible for many financially successful 1970s/80s comedies. He produced Animal House and directed Meatballs. This lead to pictures like Stripes, Ghostbusters, Twins, and more. As a kid, my feelings about Reitman’s movies were pretty much limited to Ghostbusters and Kindergarten Cop, and we watched them a lot. As an adult, I find his work to not hold up very well; Ghostbusters has been the only one I’ve enjoyed revisiting. I think the style of comedy Reitman made during those decades doesn’t work anymore, and it’s pretty evident with this film.

Movie Review – Wonder Woman 1984

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
Written by Patty Jenkins, Geoff Johns, and David Callaham
Directed by Patty Jenkins

I can’t say I was excited to watch Wonder Woman 1984. The first film was fine, but all of Warner’s attempts to build their superhero universe since Man of Steel have just not been my style. Shazam was pretty okay, but as a whole, the DCEU, or whatever they call it, is dull & boring. I won’t waste your time if you are here to see me get to the point, but I was bored for most of Wonder Woman 1984 and just didn’t really like it. I am definitely a DC Comics fan, but the films don’t capture what it is I love about these characters in any way. They are a flat, soulless trudge through two hours.

Movie Review – Red, White, and Blue (2020)

Red, White, and Blue (2020)
Written by Steven McQueen & Courttia Newland
Directed by Steven McQueen

In this film, director Steve McQueen explores the intersection of blacks & immigrants with the police. To say this is a politically and emotionally charged issue to take on would be an understatement. Much like the United States, England’s law enforcement has had a very tense relationship with Black and Asian communities. The majority of the London Metropolitan Police in the 1970s were white men from conservative backgrounds who saw any guff from a non-white civilian as an attempt to humiliate them. There was an ongoing sentiment that these populations need to be “put in their place” to hold up the law.

Movie Review – Attack the Block

Attack the Block (2011)
Written & Directed by Joe Cornish

In the wake of Edgar Wright’s success with Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, there was suddenly a demand for smart takes on genre movies, and it seemed like the British were very talented at writing these stories. Joe Cornish was a comedian who co-hosted the popular Adam and Joe Show, a skit comedy series that ran on Channel 4 for five years. He went on to do a radio show with his writing partner Adam Buxton and that ended when production on Attack the Block began. After being mugged by youths from a housing project, Cornish started to wonder how these very tough kids would handle an alien invasion in their neighborhood, and the story was born.

Superhero Spotlight – The Atom

Ray Palmer was not the first hero named The Atom. However, unlike his Silver Age colleagues, The Flash (Barry Allen) or Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Palmer has little to nothing in common with his Golden Age counterpart. While the original Atom (Al Pratt) was the cliché 98-pound weakling who trained to become a two-fisted powerhouse, this 1960s reinvention was focused on his name’s scientific aspects.

Movie Review – Colossal

Colossal (2016)
Written & Directed by Nacho Vigalondo

You might think you know where this movie is going, but it will surprise you in the third act and venture into a wild new direction. I have loved Nacho Vigalondo’s work since I first saw Timecrimes so many years ago. I had circled Colossal hesitantly for the last few years because reviews were so mixed. The concept was intriguing, but I could also see how it could possibly fall flat. I think the trailer and descriptions did an excellent job of hiding what the picture was actually about, and that’s what made that third act twist so satisfying and suddenly injected the movie with life.

Comic Book Review – New Teen Titans Omnibus Volume 5

New Teen Titans Omnibus Volume 5 (2020)
Reprints New Teen Titans v2 #32-49, New Teen Titans Annual #3 & 4, Tales of the Teen Titans #91, Infinity Inc. #45, Secret Origins #13, Secret Origins Annual #3
Written by Marv Wolfman (with Dan Mishkin, Roy Thomas, RJM L’Officer, and Paul Levitz
Art by Eduardo Barretto, Erik Larsen, Michael Collins, Romeo Tanghal, Kelley Jones, Colleen Doran, Ty Templeton, and Paris Cullins

And so we reach the end of the road. New Teen Titans would end with issue 49, becoming New Titans with number 50. It was decided the characters had grown beyond being kids, and Marv Wolfman apparently wanted to tell more adult stories with them. The Nightwing/Starfire relationship with images of them in bed together unclothed already hinted that we were dealing with legal adults. Then Donna Troy’s marriage to Terry Long was also a significant signal that the “teen” days were coming to an end. Wally West had become The Flash with the closing of Crisis, and so it was that this generation joined their adult counterparts as peers now, not just sidekicks. That doesn’t mean these are good comics though, in fact, I think we got to some of the worst stories Wolfman ever wrote on this series.

Movie Review – Galaxy Quest

Galaxy Quest (1999)
Written by David Howard & Robert Gordon
Directed by Dean Parisot

Tim Allen is a real bastard. He’s leaned into his conservatism and allowed his current sitcom and his social media presence to promote people like Trump and some pretty rotten ideologies to go along with that. It doesn’t surprise me, to be honest. His first tv-series Home Improvement, always had a weird regressive feel to it, in my opinion. I watched it growing up, but I can’t ever say I enjoyed it; it was just sort of on because the television was always on. In the late 1990s to mid-2000s, Allen dominated the quasi-family friendly movie shlock business, likely due in part but not exclusively to his role as Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story, a part I suspect that has kept him wealthy ever since. Despite Galaxy Quest having a strong fan base, I just sort of lumped it in with The Santa Clause or Jungle 2 Jungle as something not worth watching. But then I did.

Movie Review – Doctor Zhivago

Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Written by Robert Bolt
Directed by David Lean

Coming off the meteoric success of Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean desired to make a film more romantic & relationship-centered, a counter to Lawrence’s epic war themes. However, Hollywood now saw him as a filmmaker of sprawling bombastic movies. Doctor Zhivago, based on the worldwide bestseller by Boris Pasternak. Originally, Omar Sharif signed on with the expectation of playing Pasha, while Lean wanted Peter O’Toole as the lead again. O’Toole opted out, and so Lean asked Sharif to play the lead part. On December 22, 1965, just in time for Christmas, Doctor Zhivago was released in theaters and became one of the highest-grossing movies of all-time.