Seth Harris

Patron Pick – Slumberland

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.

Slumberland (2022)
Written by David Guion and Michael Handelman
Directed by Francis Lawrence

The collective American memory is a fickle thing. There have been pieces of art that reached astronomical levels of fame within the culture a hundred years ago that have been completely lost to the masses. I tend to think this is intentional. It’s dangerous to have a society where people remember. In remembering, we will make connections, and when that happens, those in power don’t have long on their thrones. Like a dream fading in the first few minutes of waking up, we’ve forgotten about Little Nemo in Slumberland.

Movie Review – The Banshees of Inisherin

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Written & Directed by Martin McDonagh

The jury is still out for me on my feelings about Martin McDonagh’s films. I know they are great showcases of his sly storytelling and filmmaking skill. I just don’t know how much I like them or not. It’s a strange thing I haven’t encountered with many directors where I acknowledge that they make great films, but I feel passionately ambivalent about them. I can’t say I have loved his movies, but I have been entertained and impressed by some of them, including this one. Perhaps it’s something connected to his Irish sensibilities, a constant struggle between seeking approval while having a fiery determination to tell anyone giving it out to “feck off.” McDonagh makes movies that are distinctly Irish (even if they aren’t all set there) and very distinctly him.

PopCult Podcast – Bardo/Bones and All

A journey through the dreams of a (dying?) artist trying to grapple with his cultural identity. Two young lovers on an endless cannibalistic road trip through America.

Comic Book Review – Batman: Killing Time

Batman: Killing Time (2022)
Reprints Batman: Killing Time #1-6
Written by Tom King
Art by David Marquez

I don’t think this is a controversial opinion, but here goes: The most interesting thing about the Batman mythos is his villains. If you had to compare Batman to another superhero based on everything surrounding the character, Spider-Man is your best bet. Yet, Spider-Man is a character often more interesting than many of his rogues while still having some fascinating baddies in the mix. Batman, on the other hand, is a one-note character for me; of course, it all depends on who is writing. I’m always eager to see what the villains are up to, though, and this mini-series by Tom King focuses mainly on two of them, a pair we don’t see too often: The Riddler and Catwoman.

Movie Review – Aftersun

Aftersun (2022)
Written & Directed by Charlotte Wells

Many people will never know their parents as real human beings. That could be because the parent puts up emotional barriers to hide their vulnerabilities. The parent may not want to overwhelm the child with adult emotions they are far too young to understand, which continues into their child’s adulthood. Or the parent could simply not respect the child as a person and think they couldn’t understand. I know for me, my parents will always be enigmas. Estranged from my dad for 14 years and counting and my mom for 3+. It’s better for me that way; they are both broken, toxic people who I don’t think will ever seek out the help they need. I don’t have the bandwidth to do it for them, and honestly, I was neglected in so many ways, so a relationship with them is nothing I desire. But, unfortunately, that’s how life can sometimes be. We don’t choose to be born, and we don’t choose who we are born to. Some people have parents that are grounded, open, and loving. Others have parents who are distant, closed off, and confusing. All we can do is try to make sense of the cards we are dealt.

Movie Review – The Passenger

The Passenger (1975)
Written by Mark Peploe, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Peter Wollen
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

This will be our last stop with the filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, though he kept making films. It will have to be another time when we look at his work outside his four Monica Vitti films and his MGM trilogy, but we’re ending on an exceptionally high note. Financially this was not a success, and in the aftermath, Jack Nicholson was sold the rights after a dispute between him and MGM over another picture in development. The Passenger would sit on a shelf for three decades after its initial release, a film thought to be lost and only recaptured by going back to read the old reviews. In 2006, it finally received a DVD release and could be rediscovered by a new generation. It’s a dense picture, full of Antonioni’s common themes but lots of new settings and political ideas surfacing. The result is another enigmatic film that performs a kind of hypnosis on the viewer, a picture that is multiple things at once and deserving of considerable examination.

TV Review – The White Lotus Season Two

The White Lotus Season Two (HBOMax)
Written & Directed by Mike White

The first season of Mike White’s surprise HBO hit The White Lotus delivered an acerbic examination of the lives of the privileged while vacationing in another culture’s home. That setting was Hawaii, and the interactions between characters, both local and foreign, resulted in some pretty strong dark comedy about colonialism. For the second season, White drops all but one guest and switches the setting to a White Lotus resort in Taormina, Sicily. Once again, we have three sets of guests intermingling with the staff and local people, exploring ideas of ennui, sex, and alienation. The quality here does not skip a bit, but I did find that White was pulling his punches, being a little too gentle with the same people he would have skewered a year ago.

Movie Review – Zabriskie Point

Zabriskie Point (1970)
Written by Michelangelo Antonioni, Fred Gardner, Sam Shepard, Tonino Guerra, and Clare Peploe
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

Michelangelo Antonioni experienced his first commercial failure with Zabriskie Point. I never really thought of his movies as something that sought mass audience approval. His work in Italy felt extremely niche, but that could be because today, popular media is often so broad & so shallow that we aren’t used to seeing thoughtful, challenging works shown in the cineplex. The United States in 1970 was an incredibly different time than now, especially with film. Influenced by the revolution in filmmaking making happening in Europe, American directors and studios were trying to crank out fare that would appeal to the youth counterculture. Easy Rider crafted the mold, and everyone else chased it. Zabriskie Point is a movie that’s part of that shift, but it’s still Antonioni’s particular perspective on existence in the modern world and once again follows two people adrift in this strange new world.

Movie Review – Bones and All

Bones and All (2022)
Written by David Kajganich
Directed by Luca Guadagnino

A recurring trope in American cinema is the story of a pair of lovers, lost in a world without much to offer them, traveling across desolate landscapes and having strange encounters. Most notably, Arthur Penn told us this story with Bonnie & Clyde and Terence Malick with Badlands; the list is ever-growing. More often than not, these stories serve as commentary on the plight of the current youth, a means to examine what makes it challenging to be coming into adulthood at a particular time and how young people respond to these obstacles. Luca Guadagnino’s latest, Bones and All, is one of those movies. He’s not brand new to these ideas; they were explored with a lot of depth in his HBO mini-series We Are Who We Are, albeit with a more grounded concept.

Not a Review, but an actual thing you can download

So I have been playing with the ChatGPT AI and making some incredibly stupid, yet hilarious things to entertain me. This weekend I came up an exceptionally stupid yet entertaining thing, Oh, Hello the Tabletop Roleplay Game.

If you are not familiar, these are two characters created by John Mulaney and Nick Kroll that are so weird and awful and funny. They have had an off-Broadway show, an on-Broadway show, a p’dcast, and have appeared all over television. I made a game where you get to play as them. That’s fucking hilarious to me. You can read it and download it below. Let me know if you play it.

oh hello the ttprg Download