2016 – Page 4 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Elle

Elle (2016)
Written by David Birke and Philippe Djan
Directed by Paul Verhoeven

Elle is a deceptively simple film, jolting its audience by opening on the ending of a brutal assault and rape inside the home of Michele, an upper middle class older single woman. The rapist, his face covered in a ski mask, flees and Michele with almost mechanical automaticity takes a bath, puts makeup over her black eye, and goes about her day and the next with no reaction. It’s only the following evening at dinner with friends and her ex-husband that she casually reveals, trying to laugh it off, that she was raped. The viewer is meant to be unsettled by how cold Michele is through all of this with her friends and family acting as our stand-ins, utterly shocked at what happened.

Music Review – Boo Boo|Toro y Moi

Boo Boo|Toro y Moi (2016)
Produced by Toro y Moi | Carpark

Listening to Boo Boo by Toro y Moi is a profoundly nostalgic experience, taking me back to childhood in the late 80s/early 90s. There is a particular sound he manages to capture from the past while staying fresh and relevant to modern tastes. He recalls the 1980s R&B of Al Jarreau, mixed with the Miami sound, but never playing as cheesy, but respectful of the roots of what he’s trying to make. The dreamy synthpop keyboards float the listener away to a white sands beach on the Atlantic, likely somewhere around Toro y Moi’s old stomping grounds of South Carolina. The snappy drum loops capture that long ago feeling of childhood for people in my generation.

PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 6

flowers

Flowers Season 1, Episode 6 (2016)
Written & Directed by Will Sharpe

flowers 06

There is no fade to black happy ending moment with depression. You keep carrying on, hoping things get better, but with no guarantees. Shun’s story about discovering The Grubbs Family books reflects the one thing that can bolster a person suffering in seemingly unending depression: This is how the world can be, and there are others who feel like you, you are not alone. All we can do in the end is be there for each other, making sure that even someone a million miles away knows you are there for them and you feel the way do as well.

Continue reading “PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 6”

PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 5

flowers

Flowers Season 1, Episode 5 (2016)
Written & Directed by Will Sharpe

Flowers

Sadness is a painful emotion to express the full experience of to others. Each of our encounters with deep sadness and depression is profoundly personal that it inhibits us from letting others know. These emotions seem to exist outside known language which is what leads to people sound intelligible or merely sobbing, their only avenue of release. Series creator Will Sharpe understands the immutable incoherence of sadness and manages to express his understandings on this state of being with honest humor. In this penultimate episode, characters either reach an explosive pinnacle or find themselves strangled by their condition and unable to speak. Sharpe has stated that Flowers is “comedy with mental illness,” a description that at first may sound merely witty but after you view the series is the very core of everything that happens.

Continue reading “PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 5”

PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 4

flowers

Flowers Season 1, Episode 4 (2016)
Written & Directed by Will Sharpe

flowers 04

Maurice has his publishing contract terminated meaning the Grubbs Family books are finished. This sends him spiraling into an even deeper depression. Deborah feels immense guilt over sleeping with Barry, the builder. The two refuse to communicate. Barry also feels guilt and confesses what happened to Maurice who honestly is too caught up in his internal struggle and depression. Amy has her first date with Abigail and after an awkward start things suddenly go entirely right, that is until Donald shows up with a camera. Maurice and Deborah accept a dinner invite from Barbara and Steve, who have mended their marriage. This ends up being a breaking point where Maurice can’t take pretending things are fine any longer and Deborah joins him in breaking.

Continue reading “PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 4”

PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 3

flowers

Flowers Season 1, Episode 3 (2016)
Written & Directed by Will Sharpe

flowers amy bed

Deborah has enlisted the builders to help her clear out and burn much of Nana Flowers’ things. Maurice has the pressure put on him by his editors to produce a new Grubbs Family book. Deborah has the family plant sees, and Nana’s ashes in the garden as a way to “heal” them but Amy questions why she keeps telling people lies about how her grandmother died. Maurice allows Deborah to spread his lie of Nana’s attempted suicide while keeping Shun his only confidante. Deborah’s sister Viv comes to visit, fresh off a divorce. George slinks around in an attempt to bed Deborah but ends up with Viv instead. Maurice comes close to telling his wife the truth but balks at the last moment.

Continue reading “PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 3”

PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 2

flowers

Flowers Season 1, Episode 2 (2016)
Written & Directed by Will Sharpe

flowers s01e02

Nana Flowers is rushed to the emergency room in the wake of the disastrous anniversary party. A romantic rivalry is stoked over Deborah by the skeevy George and the earnest Barry the builder. Amy is having difficulty processing Nana’s imminent death after the doctors deliver a troubling prognosis. Abigail comes to comfort Amy, but Donald sees it as an opportunity to try to seduce their neighbor. Looming in the background of all this drama is Maurice who is having difficulty explaining just how Nana injured himself. He enlists Shun to dispose of his noose so that his attempted suicide will be kept a secret. However, young Hugo draws something that will force Maurice to open up about what happened.

Continue reading “PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 2”

PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 1

flowers

Flowers Season 1, Episode 1 (2016)
Written & Directed by Will Sharpe

flowers 01

Maurice Flowers is a depressed children’s author living in a quaint country cottage with his family. A few months ago, after his depression began, Maurice entered into an open relationship with his wife, Deborah. Deborah is awkwardly attempting to extend herself and explore this option given to her but is feigning enthusiasm. Their twins, Donald and Amy, are overly ambitious grown children who bicker constantly and are sunk into their obsessions of craft (inventing and music, respectively) but share a mutual love for their neighbor Abigail. Rounding out the Flowers household are Maurice’s aged mother and Shun, a young Japanese artist who illustrates Maurice’s books.

Continue reading “PopCult Watches: Flowers Season 1, Episode 1”

Movie Review – Trespass Against Us

a24 visions

Trespass Against Us (2016)
Written by Alastair Siddons
Directed by Adam Smith

trespass against us.jpg

Chad Cutler is part of a caravan community in the English West Country. This collection of people living on the fringes of society is overseen by Chad’s domineering father Colby who has refused his son’s urges to move his family away from this rural waste. Instead, Colby recruits Chad into breaking into and robbing a prominent local politician’s house. Chad is a skilled driver, and so he manages to evade the police who know the culprits but don’t have the proof to apprehend them. Tensions increase between father and son as attention is drawn to their caravan and Chad’s wife plans to leave with the children.

Continue reading “Movie Review – Trespass Against Us”

Movie Review – 20th Century Women

a24 visions

20th Century Women (2016)
Written & Directed by Mike Mills

20th century women

Jamie is fifteen years old in 1979, living in a crumbling manor in Santa Barbara with his older mother, Dorothea. Residing as renters in Dorothea’s large home are Abbie, a twentysomething photographer & cervical cancer survivor and William, a carpenter/mechanic who is helping renovate the house. Jamie is desperately in love with his long-time best friend Julie, who refuses to have sex with him because she believes it would ruin their friendship. Dorothea becomes increasingly convinced that the generation gap is so vast that she cannot connect with Jamie any longer and solicits the help of Abbie and Julie in raising him into being a good man. What follows is a series of episodes where Jamie begins to develop a better understanding of women and what kind of man he wants to be. Dorothea also begins to learn about how differently women are defined in the late 1970s, considering herself a Bohemian but learning how much more open and progressive times have become.

Continue reading “Movie Review – 20th Century Women”