1980s – Page 6 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Intervista

Intervista (1987)
Written by Federico Fellini and Gianfranco Angelucci
Directed by Federico Fellini

When you think of Federico Fellini and movies about movies, you probably think of 8 ½, and rightly so. It’s one of the best movies ever made and the best movie about a movie ever made. However, I already reviewed it when I did a series on the iconic Italian director in 2022. When I discovered this late-career picture, I put it in this series instead. Intervista was Fellini’s second to last film, and like most artists in old age, as they grappled with their mortality, he returned to his memories. This wasn’t new for Fellini; nostalgia has always played a significant role in his work. 8 ½‘s beautiful dream/memory sequences of Guido’s and the reflections of childhood presented in Amarcord are some of the strongest examples of this in his films. Intervista is a movie about falling in love with making movies, and Fellini goes back into his memories of this time.

Comic Book Review – The Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume Five

The Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume Five (2023)
Reprints Uncanny X-Men #194-209, X-Men Annual #9-10, New Mutants Special Edition, New Mutants Annual #2, Nightcrawler #1-4, Longshot #1-6, and Marvel Fanfare #33
Written by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, and Ann Nocenti
Art by John Romita Jr, Barry Windsor-Smith, Rick Leonardi, June Brigman, Dave Cockrum, Art Adams, and Alan Davis

Chris Claremont is wondering where he can go with the X-Men in 1985. He’s been writing the book for an entire decade, and you can feel him struggling to find storylines to latch onto. Plot elements get introduced but seemingly forgotten in the next issue. Sometimes, they will resurface months or even a year later. Outside of Storm, the rest of the cast is just sort of there. If you stand back and look at the comics landscape at this time, the type of stories being told and the tone of comics were dramatically changing. The old Silver Age villain-of-the-month tropes had grown tired, and more mature writing was what people wanted. Well, mature in the case of someone like Alan Moore, but not so much with everyone else. At a minimum, stories were becoming grittier or making meta-commentary on the genre.

Comic Book Review – The Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume Four

The Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume Four (2021)
Reprints Uncanny X-Men #176-193, X-Men Annual #8, Kitty Pryde and Wolverine #1-6, X-Men and Alpha Flight #1-2, and Marvel Fanfare #40
Written by Chris Claremont (w/Barry Windsor-Smith)
Art by John Romita, Jr, Al Milgrom, Paul Smith, Barry Windsor-Smith, Steve Leialoha, and Craig Hamilton

The Uncanny X-Men was approaching a period of massive changes. This collection ends with Claremont’s 100th issue on the title, and you can feel him searching for new threads to connect old ideas with fresh ones. Issue 176 sees two prologues, one to a story that just feels like treading water, and the other is something that will develop over the next few months.

Comic Book Review – The Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume Three

The Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume Three (2021)
Reprints Uncanny X-Men #154-175, X-Men Annual #6-7, Special Edition X-Men #1, Marvel Graphic Novel #5, Wolverine #1-4, and Magik #1-4
Written by Chris Claremont
Art by Dave Cockrum, Paul Smith, Bill Sienkiewicz, Brent Anderson, Frank Miller, Walter Simonson, John Romita Jr., Michael Golden, Bret Blevins, John Buscema, Ron Frenz, and Sal Buscema

Chris Claremont’s X-Men run began as an engine running on sagas. The Phoenix saga started almost as soon as he began writing the book and dominated for three years. Following that, you had the Kitty Pryde era, where her joining the team and going through growing pains were crucial features. It wasn’t as saga-ish, but it gave us stories like Days of Future Past, which still ripple through X-Men media to this day. In reading these stories, I get the sense Claremont was trying to find the next big arc, but so much of what came out of the writing was circling around the same ideas or characters and fleshing them out a bit more. This is a time when the writer is trying to figure out how X-Men stays relevant and moves from the trappings of Silver Age storytelling into a more modern, mature era.

Comic Book Review – The Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume Two

The Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume Two (2020)
Reprints X-Men #132-141, X-Men Annual #4-5, Uncanny X-Men #142-153, Avengers Annual #10, Marvel Fanfare #1-4, Marvel Treasury Edition #26-27, Marvel Team-Up #100, Bizarre Adventures #27, Phoenix: The Untold Story
Written by Chris Claremont and John Byrne
Art by John Byrne & Dave Cockrum

In my last review, I held back on discussing two characters introduced in the previous couple of issues collected in that omnibus. I’ll talk about them now, as one proves to be a core element to the next phase of Claremont’s run. Emma Frost debuted as part of the Hellfire Club’s first volley to capture Jean Grey and bring her into the fold. I had read these issues years ago and didn’t remember that Emma gets taken off the board fairly quickly. This means when the X-Men finally meet the entire Hellfire Club, Emma is catatonic and not part of the action.

Comic Book Review – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Black & White Collection Volumes One & Two

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection Volumes One & Two (2014)
Reprints (V1) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1-7 and Raphael One-Issue Micro-Series
(V2) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 8-11, Michelangelo One-Issue Micro-Series, Donatello One-Issue Micro-Series, and Leonardo One-Issue Micro-Series
Writing and Art by Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird

I won’t go over the backstory of how Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came to be. That is a well-trod path you can find in various forms online. Instead, I want to share my first encounters with these characters in animation and comic books. Like almost every child in 1987, I watched television, unaware of what would be coming next. It was around Christmas, and our local Fox affiliate was showing a new episode of the opening mini-series each day of the week. I couldn’t remember the full name of the show, so I just called them “The Turtles” until I had it down. I was six years old at the time.

Movie Review – Vagabond

Vagabond (1985)
Written and directed by Agnes Varda

It seems easy for so many to demonize the vulnerable. That’s one of the most upsetting things about humanity for me, to see & hear people refer to subgroups of their fellow human beings as animals. One group in America that is treated in such a way through legislation & everyday rhetoric is the homeless. There are myriad reasons why a person might end up living on the streets. In the West, we still fail to treat the mentally disabled with respect & dignity. The average worker lives in constant peril that each paycheck might be their last. Queer & trans youth are routinely kicked out of their homes by parents whose brains have been inundated with the most hateful propaganda. When I see videos on TikTok of fellow teachers disparaging young people for being disengaged in what they are being taught, I feel like the speakers are missing the point. This is a society that has no intent of ever helping you and would instead grind us into bone meal. If you do not submit your life wholly to the capitalist game, then the ones who are too frightened to ever break away happily piss on your grave.

PopCult Podcast – The PopCult 2023 Halloween Spooktacular

It’s night of classic tricks & treats as our intrepid hosts dress up and go door to door. It seems like some of what they find is well worth the effort, but other things are getting some houses tp’ed.

PopCult Podcast – Little Shop of Horrors/The Faculty

We continue our Halloween celebration with two creepy tales of invasions from beyond. In the first, our aliens strike in the form of flesh-eating plants. In the second they take on the role of authority figures in a high school.

Movie Review – Psycho II

Psycho II (1983)
Written by Tom Holland
Directed by Richard Franklin

In an era where every mildly successful film is spun out into a franchise, it might not seem strange for there to be a Psycho sequel, let alone three of them plus a shot-by-shot remake, a failed NBC pilot, and a prequel TV series. It should be strange, though. Psycho was such a singular event in American film, one that feels to me that there isn’t more to the story to tell, and I don’t need to know the fate of Norman Bates or how he got the way he is. Alfred Hitchcock is not my favorite director, but I respect the hell out of the boundaries he pushed during the 1960s, inspiring many filmmakers to come. The best way to show appreciation for him would be to make clever films about the human psyche, not regurgitate his established work.