2020 – Page 12 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Spaceship Earth

Spaceship Earth (2020)
Directed by Matt Wolf

In 1991 an ambitious project began in the wilderness of Arizona. This was Biosphere 2, a three-acre structure built to be an artificial, enclosed ecological system. Seven biomes were represented inside the Biosphere: a rainforest, saltwater habitat with a coral reef, mangrove wetlands, a savannah, a fog desert, and two spaces reserved for human habitation and scientific work. Eight people from various scientific backgrounds were locked inside Biosphere 2 to create a self-sustaining system, the likes of which could be replicated to enable human colonies on other planets that didn’t have the elements needed to sustain life. Over two years, this crew went through a series of challenges, both with the elements and interpersonally. By the end, there were many questions as to the scientific validity of the whole endeavor.

TV Review – Tales from the Loop Season One, Episode Five

Tales from the Loop (Amazon Prime)
Season One, Episode Five – “Control”
Written by Nathaniel Halperin
Directed by Tim Mielants

Tales from the Loop continues its interconnected anthology structure with a chapter that touches on events from episode two, yet you don’t have to watch that one to understand what is going on. In fact, I think you could watch this series on shuffle and still have the same experience as the connections are so light. There is even a brief reference to episode three that you don’t need to fully comprehend to follow the story being told here. The theme for this episode is Grief and how people work through that process while feeling powerless to do anything.

Media Moment (05/01/20)

NBCUniversal’s CEO Jeff Shell recently made comments about the success of Trolls: World Tour’s digital release due to coronavirus theater closures. The movie has apparently done well enough that the company is now looking at releasing more films to homes first during the quarantines but also continuing the strategy when theaters open back up. AMC and Regal didn’t take this news well and have said all movies released by NBCUniversal will not be carried in their theaters if this goes through. Shell has backtracked it a little with some confusing semantics, but I think home streaming options are going to become a must as this pandemic drags on into the summer and likely the fall.

April 2020 Digest

Features
My Favorite Screwball Comedies
Twin Peaks: The 30th Anniversary
My Favorite Movie Musicals
March/April Book Update
How I Read a Poem: The Second Coming|W.B. Yeats Part 1, Part 2
My Favorite Movies of 1990

Book Update: March-April 2020

Fiction

Instructions For a Funeral: Stories by David Means

I really disliked this collection for one main reason, Means’s prose is meandering so much that you completely disconnect from the character he’s giving a voice to. There are some alright pieces with a good core idea, but then the execution is soporific, leading me to realize I’d “read” three pages and not remembered a stitch of what I’d seen on the page. I’m a reader who loves literary fiction and even postmodern writing that plays with structures and voice. But this is just plain boring, with characters who never become compelling and lacking the urgency good short fiction possesses.

TV Review – The Outsider

The Outsider (HBO)
Written by Richard Price
Directed by Jason Bateman, Andrew Bernstein, Igor Martinović, Karyn Kusama, Daina Reid, J.D. Dillard, and Charlotte Brändström

HBO’s The Outsider does not ease the viewer into its story. It explodes in the first ten minutes with the inciting crime, the brutal murder of an 11-year-old boy. The audience doesn’t see the act, but we are with the local man walking his dog, who comes across the crime scene. In a quick succession of camera shots, we see the mutilated remains that look like an animal savaged the poor child. Thus begins the first two hours of this adaptation of the Stephen King novel. I have to say, these opening two parts are amazing and had me riveted to the screen. Major props to Jason Bateman on directing and bringing such a simmering, tense atmosphere to the project.

SXSW Short Film Festival @ Home – Made in Texas

Narrative

Ter ***
Directed by Maria Luisa Santos

This short begins with a sense of immediacy as live-in housekeeper Teresa discovers she is pregnant. We learn the father isn’t in the picture and that Ter spends her days caring for the young daughter of her employers. She truly loves this girl and manages to hold back her anxieties about the next steps of her life, until the finale. Good but a little slow for a short film, wish I knew more about Teresa.

TV Review – Tales from the Loop Season One, Episode Four

Tales from the Loop (Amazon Prime)
Season One, Episode Four – “Echo Chamber”
Written by Nathaniel Halperin
Directed by Andrew Stanton

The director of Finding Nemo and Wall-E is the filmmaker behind this entry into the Loop series, which is much less science fiction than it is a profoundly human and grounded story. “Echo Chamber” examines death and mortality against the fantastic landscape of the series. Yes, there is a technological wonder of the echo sphere, a hollow metal sphere where your echo reveals how much longer your life will last. But that’s just a background element to the relationship between Cole and his grandfather Russ (Jonathan Pryce).

Comic Book Review – The Wicked + The Divine Book 4

The Wicked + The Divine Book 4 (2020)
Written by Kieron Gillen
Art by Jamie McKelvie and Matt Wilson

“Sticking the landing” is a phrase that means achieving a conclusion that is satisfying in relation to the journey that led there. When you have one of these finite comic sagas like Y the Last Man or Sandman, where you’ve been with this singular creator’s vision, and the series ends with their final word. We often remember the great ones and the disappointing comics get quickly forgotten, and we move on. The Wicked + The Divine delivers a truly massive closure that wraps up every character and provides total closure. There’s no story to be told after the closing pages of this book.

SXSW Short Film Festival @ Home – Animated

Chicken of the Dead ***
Directed by Julien David

I was immediately struck by how much this animation style reminded me of the work that came out of the Klasky-Csupo studio in the 1990s (Rugrats, Wild Thornberrys, Duckman, etc.). In this short, chicken factory maven Bernard Lepique has come to a gala dinner in his honor. He uses this as an occasion to introduce his newest genetically modified delicacy, a melange of chicken and antibiotics. The result is a horror movie spoof that sees the effects of this new food creating hordes of monsters. It’s a fun and light satire on the factory farming industry that is animated quite well.