1990s – Page 2 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – The Double Life of Veronique

The Double Life of Veronique (1991)
Written by Krzysztof Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz
Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve found the idea that people shouldn’t have regrets incredibly strange. I know that on my deathbed, there will be things I look back on with shame or think about what I could have done differently. I do these things now, and I believe I have quite a while before I pass. In my opinion, to live and never regret is to have never lived. It means you avoided the tough choices, one thing that lets us know we are alive. So many of those choices aren’t even up to us; they remain in the hands of chance. Why did I end up living where I do, married to this partner, and working this job? If I could go back in time, I would certainly change some things, but I would want other things to remain the same. Yet, those changes would make me a different person living a different life, right? Is our existence just a series of possible realities collapsing into a single material reality as we encounter each moment?

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – The Electric State Part Six

Read the previous chapter here

One Year Ago
Stella Shaw lays on her back, combat boots up on top of one of several monitors she’d spent months scavenging for. With a little help from Lester, a local tinkerer, the teenage girl constructed a makeshift antenna she installed one of the watchtowers in the compound for the best possible reception. It was just her luck that she picked up a broadcast of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air coming from somewhere to the west. Down in what Stella’s aunt nicknamed her “hidey-hole” she was quite cozy. These series of reinforced tunnels might have triggered claustrophobia in the adults, but they were the perfect fit for Stella.

Movie Review – Cure

Cure (1997)
Written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Something about disrupting the flow of daily patterns drastically unnerves the average person. The next time you have the opportunity, allow an awkward silence between you and another person. Study their reaction. You can learn a lot about how someone handles that silence when all they have is their own mind to listen to. In Cure, it appears we have a serial killer using hypnotism to get seemingly regular folks to kill their loved ones. Yet when the audience finally sees how it goes down, it’s far simpler than that. This interloper disrupts the pattern and, with minimal effort, shatters these people’s minds.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – The Electric State Part Three

Read Part Two here

Two months ago.

Wyatt Butler sat hunched over in his desk chair, listening to his ex-wife Christine rightfully chide him for failing to pick up their son for Wyatt’s weekend. A case had fallen on the private investigator’s desk, a wealthy woman suspecting her husband of cheating, and she offered cash that Wyatt couldn’t pass up.

TV Review – Northern Exposure Season Five

Northern Exposure Season Five (1993-94)
Written by Diane Frolov, Andrew Schneider, Rogers Turrentine, Mitchell Burgess, Robin Green, Jeff Melvoin, Barbara Hall, David Chase, and Jed Seidel
Directed by Daniel Attias, Michael Fresco, Jim Charleston, John David Coles, Nick Marck, Mark Horowitz, Michael Katleman, Michael Lange, Michael Vittes, Oz Scott, Bill D’Elia, Lorraine Senna, Tom Moore, and James Hayman

Joshua Brand and John Falsey, the co-creators and showrunners of Northern Exposure, were dealing with some stress by the end of season four. They had helped create shows like St. Elsewhere and I’ll Fly Away, but with this series, they finally found something they could cultivate and grow. The first problem came when writer Sandy Veith sued Universal, the production company behind NE, claiming they had stolen his idea and given him no credit or compensation. Universal may have cribbed some of Veith’s ideas and fed them to Brand & Falsey, who didn’t know where they had come from. Veith’s script was about an Italian-American doctor working in a small town in the U.S. South. Falsey was struggling with alcoholism and related sickness. He would be in that fight until his passing in 2019. It felt like it was time to leave. Who would they be replaced with? Cue David Chase.

PopCult Podcast – Halloween Spooktacular 2024

Frankencows, J-Horror, Little Wednesday, and the Sanderson Sisters are all here to make this Halloween a scare of a good time.

TV Review – Northern Exposure Season Four

Northern Exposure Season Four (1992-93)
Written by Robin Green, Michael Katleman, Diane Frolov, Andrew Schneider, Jeff Vlaming, Mark B. Perry, Sy Rosen, Christian Williams, Mitchell Burgess, David Assael, Jeff Melvoin, Denise Dobbs, and Geoffrey Neigher
Directed by Dean Parisot, Michael Katleman, Nick Marck, Charles Braverman, Rob Thompson, Joan Tewkesbury, Randall Miller, Michael Fresco, Daniel Attias, Win Phelps, Joe Napolitano, Bill D’Elia, Adam Arkin, Michael Lange, Jim Charleston, and Frank Prinzi

Northern Exposure was coming off season three, for which it won several Emmys. Season Four was to be the largest season order for the series, with twenty-five episodes. These days, most shows we get on the variety of streaming services come in around 8-10 episodes per season. Thirteen episodes feel like an indulgence. One of the downsides of having such large season orders was that quantity did not equate to quality. There are some utterly fantastic parts of season four. Then, some episodes are cringingly wrong and outdated. Even so, I’d rather watch this season again than watch much contemporary television, especially the fare that leans into cynicism.

Comic Book Review – X-Men by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee Omnibus Volume Two

X-Men by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee Omnibus Volume Two (2022)
Reprints X-Factor #63-70, Uncanny X-Men #273-280, X-Men #1-11, and Ghost Rider #26-27
Written by Chris Claremont, Louise Simonson, Whilce Portacio, Jim Lee, Fabian Nicieza, Peter David, John Byrne, Scott Lobdell, and Howard Mackie
Art by Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, Klaus Janson, Marc Silvestri, Rick Leonardi, Michael Golden, Larry Stroman, Paul Smith, Andy Kubert, Steven Butler, Kirk Jarvinen, Ron Wagner, Art Thibert, Scott Williams, Hilary Barta, Josef Rubenstein, Michael Bair, Mike Witherby, Karl Alstaetter, and Dan Panosian

The first X-Men comic I ever read in full was Chris Claremont’s final issue. I didn’t know it at the time. It was Christmas 1991. For the last couple of years, I had desperately wanted one of 22 issue comic book grab bags sold in the Sears Wishbook. Having grown up watching Challenge of the Superfriends, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, and other animated series, my interest had been piqued. Occasionally, I’d convince my mother to buy me a comic book at the grocery store, or I’d spend some birthday money to pick up a couple. That same year, I purchased some Superman books and a Wolverine comic. But this Christmas gift was the one that changed everything. This was the year I became a comic book collector, not for money, but because I was enamored with these complex worlds and their colorful characters.

Comic Book Review – X-Men: Days of Future Present and The X-Tinction Agenda

X-Men: Days of Future Present (1989)
Reprints Fantastic Four Annual #23, The New Mutants Annual #6, X-Factor Annual #5, and Uncanny X-Men Annual #14
Written by Walt Simonson, Louise Simonson, and Chris Claremont
Art by Jackson Guice, Geof Isherwood, Terry Shoemaker, Chris Wozniak, Scott Williams, Allen Milgrom, Art Thibert, Harry Candelario, Jon Bogdanove, Arthur Adams, Dan Green, Steve Moncuse, Art Thibert, and Bob Wiacek

X-Men: The X-Tinction Agenda (1992)
Reprints Uncanny X-Men #270-272, New Mutants #95-97, and X-Factor #60-62
Written by Chris Claremont and Louise Simonson
Art by Jim Lee, Art Thibert, Scott Williams, Rob Liefeld, Joe Rubinstein, Jon Bogdanove, John Caponigro, Al Milgrom, and Guang Yap

Two of Chris Claremont’s stories dominated his run and every subsequent run to follow – “The Dark Phoenix Saga” and “Days of Future Past.” That latter story inspires “Days of Future Present,” a kind of sequel focusing on the adult Franklin Richards introduced in the old story. Over in the pages of Louise Simonson’s Power Pack, she had included Franklin, the son of Mr. Fantastic, and the Invisible Woman showcases his burgeoning mutant powers. The adult version of Franklin is essentially a god who can reshape reality. He’s searching for his lost love, Rachel Summers.

Movie Review – Sátántangó

Sátántangó (1994)
Written by Béla Tarr and László Krasznahorkai
Directed by Béla Tarr

Seven hours and thirty minutes. That’s what will stand out for most people when they learn about Sátántangó. That is certainly something that makes it unlike most films. A runtime that long feels overwhelming, and that’s the reason Béla Tarr made this movie. Based on the novel of the same name, the film’s structure is a piece of wonder modeled after the actual tango dance. Broken into twelve parts, the story does not move chronologically and follows the steps of the tango – six steps forward, six steps back. It’s a daunting cinematic challenge, but I found it a very fulfilling experience and felt things I never had before about films.