August 2024 – PopCult Reviews

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Supersworn: The Victory Academy Part Three

[Begin a Session: Unexpected return of an enemy or threat]
Thread: The Machine Collective – Aiden Bell
Oracle: Defend Reputation

Aiden Bell is attended to by his personal physician, Dr. Carly Clayton, formerly known as the hero Aegis. Clayton tells Bell he appears to be okay but wants to know how he was able to change into Captain Quantum, given that he was supposed to have expunged the entity years ago. Bell spits at her with rage, throwing his food tray across the room.

“It was a filthy dirty trick by that bastard Silver Sentry!” spits Bell. “And I am going to destroy him!”

Movie Review – Pierrot Le Fou

Pierrot Le Fou (1965)
Written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard

Will I ever watch all of Godard’s films? I’m not sure. Since my college days, I’ve watched them sporadically and never chronologically. Breathless. Masculin Feminin. Alphaville. Week-end. Contempt. Some I absolutely love, others I’m just confused by and probably need to revisit or read up on. This picture, made in the middle of Godard’s most productive period, was an adaptation of a recent crime novel, Obsession. Godard described the book as “the story of a guy who leaves his family to follow a girl much younger than he is. She is in cahoots with slightly shady people, and it leads to a series of adventures.” Casting ended up reuniting Godard with Jean-Paul Belmondo, his star from Breathless, and Godard’s wife at the time, Anna Karina, who took the lead female role.

Movie Review – Wanda

Wanda (1970)
Written and directed by Barbara Loden

The Actors Studio was founded in 1948 by Elia Kazan and his associates. The building in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, became a training ground for many of the mid-century’s greatest American actors, with Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando as two of the most notable. There are a host of character actors that developed their craft here as well. The most prevalent style of American acting from the late 1940s through 1980 directly resulted from what happened in this place. Barbara Loden was one of those people to hone their skills in the Studio. She would make a name for herself on the Broadway stage, winning a Tony Award for her performance in Arthur Miller’s After the Fall. In 1970, she wrote, directed, and starred in Wanda, an independent feature that earned her the description of “female counterpart to John Cassavetes” by the New Yorker.

Movie Review – L’Atalante

L’Atalante (1934)
Written by Jean Vigo and Albert Riéra
Directed by Jean Vigo

Jean Vigo was born to parents on the run. His father was a militant anarchist, and so much of his early life involved hiding from authorities with his parents. When Vigo was 12 years old, his father was murdered in prison, but the officials tried to pass it off as a suicide. Vigo would spend his teenage years in a boarding school under an assumed name for his protection. He got married at 26, had a daughter, and died at 29 from tuberculosis, which he’d had for eight years. As a filmmaker, he’s seen as establishing poetic realism in cinema and would inspire many of the French New Wave directors nearly thirty years after his death. Despite not living for that long, Vigo’s work exudes life and a rich understanding of the human experience.

Patron Pick – The Way

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month, those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Bekah Lindstrom.

The Way (2010)
Written and directed by Emilio Estevez

I’m not someone who likes to just walk around. However, there are people in this world who find enjoyment in doing just that. This film is about a group of people hiking the Camino de Santiago, a network of pilgrimages leading to the shrine of James the Apostle in northwestern Spain. This film is inspired explicitly by Emilio Estevez’s son Taylor, who drove the route with his grandfather, Martin Sheen, in 2003. Taylor met the woman he would marry on this journey and seemed to have had a profound experience through the journey. At first, Estevez and Sheen thought a documentary might be the route, but then they decided to make a more expansive narrative feature.

PopCult Podcast – The Crow/Opening Night

We go retro this episode to look at two old releases. The first is a 90s Goth cult classic that has recently been remade. The second is a premier performance from the late, great Gena Rowlands.

TV Review – Ren Faire

Ren Faire (2024)
Directed by Lance Oppenheim

The term “reality TV” is thrown around so liberally these days, when most of the programming under that umbrella is highly contrived, and its figures’ personalities are obviously contrived. The performative nature of “reality TV” seems to have leaked out into the real world, where we see those who shape their identity around a quirk or two. How do you make a documentary in a landscape where capturing authenticity has become much more complicated. Lance Oppenheim seems to have found it. His style layers melodrama over the mundane, embracing the audience seeking something heightened. Yet, it never feels as if its subjects are being misrepresented.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Against the Wind Part Three

You can purchase Against the Wind here

Read about our previous session here.

This is my final actual play of Against the Wind for now, but I have to say this is one of the best solo systems I’ve played thus far. I love the tools of Ironsworn/Starforged, but I do feel it misses procedures that help create settings and situations sometimes. Against the Wind has such clearly written steps for building the world, creating NPCs, exploring the wilderness & settlements, and in this session dungeon delving. The tables are evocative enough without locking you into one path. I can definitely see myself returning to this one in the future.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Supersworn: The Victory Academy Part Two

Read our previous chapter here.

[Begin a Session: External factors create new danger, urgency, or importance for a quest]

Thread: Time Cop on Patrol
Oracle: Strengthen Alliance

Tempus Wright is hurtling through the time stream and picks up an anomaly from the year 2080. He reroutes his journey to 2024 to make this stop further into the future. When he emerges, Forge City is in ruins, and strange cybernetic spires rise above a black cloud-choked sky.

Movie Review – Daisies

Daisies (1966)
Written by Ester Krumbachová, Pavel Juráček, and Věra Chytilová
Directed by Věra Chytilová

There’s a vibrating chaos at the heart of Daisies, considered the most significant achievement in Czech cinema. It’s a study of patriarchy through the eyes of two cartoon-like women whose behaviors and antics are intentionally exaggerated. There’s no real plot to speak of, rather vignettes in which two girls, both named Marie, interact with people or engage in frantic behavior, giggling and gorging down food. The film conflicts with the conservatism present in Czechoslovakia’s communist government at the time. It is, in my opinion, a needed continued push to the Left that all communist governments are constantly in need of. We humans tend to settle into familiar routines and ruts, but we must also allow our perspectives to be challenged, especially when it comes to increasing our embrace of others outside of systemic power. Daisies is an attempt at that.