1990s – Page 12 – PopCult Reviews

Comic Book Review – Suicide Squad Volumes Seven and Eight

Suicide Squad: The Dragon’s Hoard (2017)
Reprints Suicide Squad #50-58
Written by John Ostrander and Kim Yale
Art by Robert Campanella, Jim Fern, Geof Isherwood, Karl Kesel, Tom Mandrake, Luke McDonnell, and Grant Miehm

Suicide Squad: The Final Mission (2019)
Reprints Suicide Squad #59-68
Written by John Ostrander and Kim Yale
Art by Geof Isherwood, Robert Campanella, and Andrew Pepoy

The opening chapter of The Dragon’s Hoard sees Amanda Waller’s Suicide Squad fully operating as mercenaries for hire, breaking most ties with the US government. It was the 50th issue of the series. It’s an oversized affair that interweaves the history of Task Force X with a fight against the undead. Rick Flag is revealed to have a son that the Squad never knew about, and the child is in danger. Waller feels compelled to honor her fallen friend and protect his child. That means putting together a crew of mainstays from the run. The team ends up facing zombie-fied versions of foes they’ve encountered along the way.

Comic Book Review – Suicide Squad Volumes Five and Six

Suicide Squad: Apokolips Now (2016)
Reprints Suicide Squad v1 #31-39
Written by John Ostrander, Kim Yale, and Robert Greenberger
Art by John K. Snyder III, Luke McDonnell, Grant Miehm, and Geof Isherwood

Suicide Squad: The Phoenix Gambit (2017)
Reprints Suicide Squad v1 #40-49
Written by John Ostrander, Kim Yale, and David M. DeVries
Art by Geof Isherwood, Luke McDonnell, and Mark Badger

Suicide Squad had an interesting conceit that allowed it to shift the narrative focus every few issues. It was also easy to drop new characters into the book and toss them out when needed, as they were primarily supervillains going through Belle Reve’s revolving door or getting killed on the missions. For the first two and half years of the title, that was how things were, but in the wake of The Janus Directive, it appeared John Ostrander was interested in dramatically shifting what the Suicide Squad would be. Before he can head off in a new direction, though, he has to wrap up loose ends from previous years.

Movie Review – Funny Games

Funny Games (2007)
Written & Directed by Michael Haneke

Following its showing at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, a panel was held for Funny Games. Director Michael Haneke and his actors fielded questions from the press about his movie. If you are subscribed to the Criterion Channel, you can watch it. Over 45 minutes, Haneke became amusedly frustrated over the journalists and critics’ seeming inability to understand the subtext of his film. Unlike David Lynch, Haneke didn’t keep the greater meaning of his work close to his vest and was very explicit. He kept reiterating that the film is not concerned with the pathology of its antagonists or anything else that was surface level. Funny Games is a film experience in which the viewer is interrogated about the very nature of violence & entertainment.

Movie Review – Benny’s Video

Benny’s Video (1993)
Written & Directed by Michael Haneke

Reality in our current period has become a grotesquely malleable element. QAnon cultists talk about wild conspiracies with such confidence that it seems to come from an entirely different dimension. The State Department gins up war with Russia and China in parallels with the fabrication and lack of substantial evidence needed to justify such actions. Everywhere you go in America, you are bombarded by marketing attempting to warp your sensibilities to believe unnecessary consumption is the answer to your existential woes. The screen acts as a filter for your emotional response. You can pause, rewind, skip, and because of that, you never really have to reflect or engage. This is the world Michael Haneke saw in Austria all the way back in 1993, and it hasn’t gotten any better.

Movie Review – The Truman Show

The Truman Show (1998)
Written by Andrew Niccol
Directed by Peter Weir

In 1991, screenwriter Andrew Niccol began shopping around a spec script for The Malcolm Show. It was a science-fiction thriller set in New York City that focused on a man discovering his life was a television show, and he tried to escape the control of his handlers. Many directors were considered: Brian DePalma, Tim Burton, Sam Raimi, Steven Spielberg. Eventually, the studio chose to go with Peter Weir, who saw the script as too dark. Instead, he wanted to emphasize the satire of the situation, still holding onto the core existential dread of the concept, but presenting it with a lightness to counter that thematic weight.

Movie Review – Fearless (1993)

Fearless (1993)
Written by Rafael Yglesias
Directed by Peter Weir

You wouldn’t be blamed for never having heard of this film. While Green Card was a quiet hit and Weir’s next picture, The Truman Show would prove a massive hit, Fearless is mostly forgotten. It wasn’t lost in a sea of better films. In October 1993, some box office hits were Demolition Man, Cool Runnings, or The Good Son. I would attribute the film’s lack of audience to the fact that Weir dives headfirst into some of the most significant themes of his career, mainly life, death, and human existence. It’s heavy stuff, and Weir handles it so well. You can honestly see him being drawn to more existential material between this and The Truman Show.

Movie Review – Green Card

Green Card (1991)
Written & Directed by Peter Weir

“Romantic comedy” is not a film genre necessarily associated with Peter Weir. He certainly has romance in his pictures (see The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness), but this particular style of movie just isn’t what you would expect from him. This is one of the few films that Weir both wrote and directed on his own, and it appears to have been inspired by French actor Gerard Depardieu. Weir wanted to bring Depardieu to an English-speaking audience after the actor was already renowned in popular French cinema. The leading male role in Green Card was explicitly written for the performer, but it didn’t propel him to immense fame in the States. It would be received with a mixed reception by the critics, seen mainly as light fare.

Movie Review – The Matrix

The Matrix (1999)
Written & Directed by Lana and Lily Wachowski

There are likely few other films in the last 25 years to have had such a profound effect on the culture. While The Matrix trilogy is met with mixed feelings in the years that have ensued, its powerfully iconic look was immediately reflected back by the media at the time of its release. In the early 2000s, it was pretty common to see some aspect of the film’s “bullet time” effect parodied in film and television. Even 2021’s Space Jam: A New Legacy includes a moment referencing the opening sequence of The Matrix. It had been a very long time since I’d watched these films; I fell into the camp of people who don’t hate them but just weren’t amazed like others were. My personal Wachowksi favorite is Speed Racer which I thought of while watching these three movies.

Movie Review – Ringu

Ringu (1998)
Written by Hiroshi Takahashi
Directed by Hideo Nakata

The origin point for much of modern Japanese horror can be traced to Ringu. This horror film has all the elements I’ve previously talked about: techno-horror, child murder, investigation that reveals the truth behind the horror. These things speak to the existential fears of not just the Japanese but almost all people living in our neoliberal present, attempting to make sense of modernity and the collapse of myths. Technology is going to lift humanity out of suffering, we are told. But has it really? Or does it fix some problems while creating new ones or exacerbating existing troubles? There’s currently a fervent discourse around child murder/molestation/etc. in America right now, but it mostly feels like political factions using the concept as yet another cultural divide rather than genuinely attempting to protect young people. The great pit in your stomach moment of horror that is well-written is the realization that the forces you are up against cannot be stopped, and so the protagonist is often warped in some way for the rest of their lives.

Movie Review – Audition

Audition (1999)
Written by Daisuke Tengan
Directed Takashi Miike

Takashi Miike is a cinematic force of nature I stumbled across one night while sitting in the Belcourt Theater in 2001. I can’t remember the film I was waiting to see, but the trailer for Audition played beforehand. If you’ve seen this trailer, then you understand what I mean when I say it was one of the most jarring things I’d seen at the time. In a matter of a minute and a half, I was wholly intrigued about what this insane, bizarre movie was. A month or so later, I returned with friends and watched Audition. At the time, I didn’t think I fully appreciated it. My vocabulary and understanding of film were much more limited than when I recently revisited the movie.