October 2023 – Page 4 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Exorcist II: The Heretic

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
Written by William Goodhart
Directed by John Boorman

Warner Brothers knew they wanted another Exorcist film after the success of the first picture. However, screenwriter William Peter Blatty and director William Friedkin had no desire to revisit this world. They told a complete story in the first picture, and the sequel would just be a silly idea. At first, the plan was to cut/paste the plot, but things quickly spiraled into unhinged territory when playwright William Goodhart was hired. He would retroactively add a backstory to Father Merrin from the first film by including the theories of a Jesuit priest who had some views about why demon possessions occurred and why some people seem to be targeted by them. Linda Blair would return as Reagan MacNeil, and even Max Von Sydow reluctantly returned to cameo as a younger Merrin. Kitty Wynn, as Sharon, the friend of the MacNeils, came back, but Ellen Burstyn flatly refused to come back as the girl’s mother. Not a great start.

PopCult Podcast – The 100th Episode

We get creative in this one.

TV Review – The Bear Season Two

The Bear Season Two (FX)
Written by Christopher Storer, Joanna Calo, Karen Joseph Adcock, Catherine Schetina, Stacy Osei-Kuffour, Alex Russell, Rene Gube, and Kelly Galuska
Directed by Christopher Storer, Joanna Calo, and Ramy Youssef

Ultimately, people don’t want to be in a state of conflict & antagonism. They want to learn, grow, and find ways to work together with others. So much of our world is informed by a media landscape that projects contrived, unnatural division. Reality television, so poorly named, delivers manufactured arguments & clashes intended for us to believe they are the truth. Even scripted narrative content is always about wars or personal contentions that go on and on and on. When do we get to see people heal genuinely or move past petty grievances in an authentic manner that isn’t cloying & artificial? The Bear is not a light show; its themes are weighty & dark. Yet, its characters are brilliantly full of life. They are capable of not living in the same rut their whole lives. Watching them struggle and grow is an absolute delight.

Comic Book Review – The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume Five

The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume Five (2011)
Reprints Swamp Thing #51-56
Written by Alan Moore
Art by Rick Veitch, John Totleben, and Alfredo Alcala

Coming off an incredible piece of horror writing, Moore keeps things chugging along at full steam in the pages of Swamp Thing. Our hero has faced the ultimate evil and has been the only one to stop it. However, there was lots of trouble bubbling over in the land of the living that directly affected the Swamp Thing. While the Crisis on Infinite Earths seems to have little consequence in these pages, we begin to see our main character connect with traditional superheroes outside of Houma, Louisiana, with this particular volume including a clash in Gotham City with Batman.