2019 – Page 15 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Midsommar

Midsommar (2019)
Written & Directed by Ari Aster

Ari Aster proves doubters wrong with his sophomore feature, a return to familiar themes of family and grief centered around pagan ritual. In contrast to the dark, emotionally volatile tone of Hereditary, Midsommar presents itself with a bright yet neutral atmosphere. Aster manages to tackle romantic relationships and their conflicts with the same sure hand he brought to examining the bleak inner workings of dysfunctional families. There’s a sense of hypnosis as we journey into the world of this film, a warm uncertainty, feeling doubts about treading further only to be nudged forward by a deceptively friendly hand. Before you know it, we are too far along to turn back and can only grimace at the horrors played out before our eyes.

PopCult June 2019 Digest

Features
Best of the 2010s: My Favorite Films of 2013
Best Pillar of Light Movies
The X-Men Films: Ranked
My Favorite Bill Murray Movies
Birthday Cinema: A Movie For Every Year I’ve Been Alive
Book Update 2019 (April-June)

Book Update 2019 – April – June

Fiction
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
I’d heard much acclaim about this short story collection and figured it was time to sit down and read it finally. I’m thrilled I did. Machado reminded me a lot of Kelly Link, weaving themes of feminism and horror into stories that stand strongly as genre pieces or a literary piece to be dissected. There’s an incredible inventiveness to the stories Machado tells. She repurposes the old folktale/urban legend about the girl the green ribbon around her neck to tell a story about a woman having her sexuality slowly but surely stolen from her over the course of decades. There’s a tale about a store clerk uncovering the horrific truth behind the seams in the prom dresses she sells that is chilling. The stand out work is the novella “Especially Heinous” that starts as TV Guide-style episode synopses of Law & Order: SVU. Things get strange when a narrative strand begins to connect these summaries, and we see a story unfolding of evil twins and demon possession. It’s one of the most ingenious ways to twist how a horror story can be told and well worth the read.

Steam Summer Sale 2019 Recommendations

It’s that time of year again and here are some games I’ve played in the last year that I would encourage you to check out during the annual sale.

Forager
Sometimes you want to resource grind without all the annoying narrative in the way. Forager is just the game for that and brings together core elements from other games like Minecraft and those clicker style games. You are a little guy who is just trying to build things to get to the next thing, so you make the bigger thing. I guess you could say the purpose of playing Forager is, so you don’t have to play Forager anymore. The more you develop, the more automated your resource gathering becomes. There are lots of satisfying sounds and flashing things on the screen so that your dopamine centers will be lit up continuously. If you want an easy pick-up and play for a couple of minutes style of game, then Forager will scratch that itch.

TV Review – Dark Season 2

Dark Season 2 (Netflix)
Written by Jantje Friese, Daphne Ferraro, Ronny Schalk, Marc O. Seng, & Martin Behnke
Directed by Baran bo Odar

You know how when a serialized show in American starts a new season and they sort of ease the audience back into the story, maybe using new characters to reintroduce the cast? Yeah, Dark just says, “Where did we leave off last time? Yes? Let’s go” This show does not let up for these eight episodes, and it is all the better for that. By the time you reach the prophesied final moments of Winden, your brain will have been stretched and tied into a knot. Yet, the showrunners throw a curveball that sends your mind hurtling into questions about what the third season could possibly be. This is science fiction on a human relationship level done oh so right!

Happy Birthday to Me: A Film For Every Year I’ve Been Alive

I turn thirty-eight years old today. Because film has had such an important place in my life, I decided to share 38 movies, one for each year since I was born, that are not necessarily my favorites but have a important place in my life. Hope you enjoy.

Modern Romance (1981, dir. Albert Brooks)
This wasn’t a film I watched as a kid; I didn’t even see it until I was in my thirties. However, it has become one of those that gets deeper the more times I watch it. My favorite aspect of Modern Romance is the lack of sugarcoating adult relationships; Brooks isn’t afraid to show his ugliness in terms of selfishness and codependency. The female protagonist is just as a terrible, allowing Brooks’ manic adult child to manipulate and coerce. The punchline of the whole film is the endnotes which reveal that these people become stuck in a toxic cycle never seeming to be able to break from this horrible relationship. Modern Romance, for me, is a warning about what kind of a partner to never become. However, it is incredibly funny stuff. More in my review here.

Movie Review – Dark Phoenix

Dark Phoenix (2019)
Written & Directed by Simon Kinberg

If a superhero is released in theaters without the promise of a dozen sequels, does it matter if we see it?
This is a legitimate question to ask ourselves in an age of perpetually existing cinematic universes. The X-Men franchise has always been an odd duck in the post-MCU landscape, with its muddled timelines and no strong throughline existing between films. Days of Future Past (2014) was the most successful in terms of box office crossing the $700 million line, but I don’t ever see too many people talk about how much they enjoyed that film. I found it to be okay, a competently made follow up to the much better First Class. The most successful movies in Fox’s superhero stable have the tangentially connected near-spoofs of Deadpool and Deadpool 2, with the bleak dystopian Logan not far behind. The X-Men team itself has suffered not just from a lack of continuity but in a stable roster of characters for audiences to become emotionally invested in. Nothing that Dark Phoenix does helps remedy these problems and leaves a sour taste in the mouth upon its conclusion.

TV Review – Black Mirror Season 5

Black Mirror Season 5 (Netflix)
Created by Charlie Brooker

Striking Vipers
Written by Charlie Brooker
Directed by Owen Harris

We live in an era where the boundaries between sexuality and gender are blurring more and more, allowing people to explore their identities in ways never before possible. Technology also offers opportunities to rewrite and redesign yourself via the anonymity of the internet. Once users could change their identities through text-based interfaces but now the digital mapping of faces you can apply overlays over your visage that transform you into a different gender, a different species, or an entire fantastical being. Where Black Mirror will typically travel to the dark side of how humans interact with technology, Striking Vipers is a spiritual successor to San Junipero, one of the more hopeful entries into the series.

Movie Review – Pokemon Detective Pikachu

Pokemon Detective Pikachu (2019)
Written by Dan Hernandez & Benji Sami, Rob Letterman, and Derek Connolly
Directed by Rob Letterman

It was always a matter of time. It was 1996 when Pocket Monsters came to the United States in the form of Gameboy games and a collectible card game. I was in high school at the time and preferred to spend what little disposable income I had on comic books so I never really got caught up in the phenomenon. I think I played the card game once in college but wasn’t pulled in, I went and saw the first animated feature film in the theater due to a nearby dollar theater, and have played an hour or two of the Gameboy game. So I’m aware of the concept and can identify a few core Pokemon, but not a fan in any sense. That said, I was hoping that this live-action feature could maybe create a bridge between hardcore fans and the liminal audience that would make Pokemon appeal to the broadest audience possible.

Movie Review – Ma

Ma (2019)
Written by Scotty Landes
Directed by Tate Taylor

Blumhouse has created a monopoly on the majority of horror in cinemas these days. Paranormal Activity was the first production that Jason Blum saw as a successful foray into horror films, and he hasn’t stopped since. I haven’t enjoyed any Blumhouse movie I’ve seen, or least I wouldn’t make an effort to rewatch anything that has crossed my screen. The factory model of filmmaking is inevitably going to deliver a majority of mediocre products and maybe once in a while something special. I don’t think Ma is that unique jewel amongst the garbage, but it isn’t awful. The core factor that keeps Ma from being a monotonous mess is Octavia Spencer.