2021 – Page 11 – PopCult Reviews

TV Review – Loki Season 1, Episode 5

Loki Season 1, Episode 5 (Disney+)
Written by Tom Kaufmann
Directed by Kate Herron

Loki continues to be the Marvel series I’m warm up to the most. While Wandavision was good, I particularly appreciate the silly fun of Loki. This particular episode plays a lot with the potential fun of having a Multiverse, which is a welcome addition. The plot doesn’t slow down for this slight detour and ends up developing our protagonists by framing them against versions of themselves. I think time travel stories always benefit from a balance of the serious and the humorous (see Back to the Future). When dealing with those types of science fiction narratives, you can’t take yourself too seriously.

Movie Review – Black Widow

Black Widow (2021)
Written by Jac Schaeffer & Ned Benson
Directed by Cate Shortland

Initially set to be released in 2020, Black Widow was delayed over a year and finally saw its theatrical & streaming release yesterday. It’s been quite a while since we had a Marvel movie, 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home, to be exact. So, with this period of palette cleansing, the Marvel shows on Disney+ being the only new things, and that was just this year; how is Black Widow? I think the MCU is undoubtedly in a new phase but not one I am very excited about. Despite having a top to bottom fantastic cast, Black Widow delivers a lackluster script and some genuinely shocking bad special effects. They seem intent on proving Martin Scorsese right.

Rest in Peace, Richard Donner

A journeyman director is very skilled in the craft of moviemaking. They don’t have a solid stylistic bent, meaning you can come across multiple movies they have directed and not be aware of the connections. In the film world, the auteur director is the one given the most praise. Those filmmakers leave distinct signs there, often revisiting specific themes or presenting images in a similar visual method. Richard Donner would undoubtedly be put in the journeyman category. He was the kind of director a movie studio loved because he would make good movies within the budget and on time. Donner never balked at any genre and was happy to tackle everything from horror to superheroes to romance to Eighties teen comedies. I am someone who goes for the auteur work when I have to choose; however, if there was ever a journeyman that made an impression on my life, it was certainly Richard Donner.

Movie Review – Brittany Runs A Marathon

Brittany Runs A Marathon felt like it was being promoted everywhere if you ever bothered with running websites or apps. Little clips of Jillian Bell turning from party girl to runner in the short clips or blurbs here and there in the year of 2019.

Or that was solely me when I started my running journey. Fear not, my running is still uninspirational, but I will be comparing notes.

Weekly Wonderings – July 5th, 2021

One of the things I love about my wife is how we are very in sync when there is a big goal. With the move coming up, we have created a shared Google calendar to post milestones and deadlines so by the time we are boarding that plane, not a single loose end is left. I think, for whatever reason, we do an excellent job of pushing our egos aside to get things done. I don’t think we have a perfect marriage because no one does at the end of the day. There are always sore points in any relationship, but it is essential to recognize those strengths when you see them. I think it helps that we believe the same things when it comes to our fundamental belief systems. That’s why married couples on drastically different ends of the political spectrum make zero sense to me. How can one person believe that the planet is dying because of humanity’s actions and the other think no big deal? And they could have kids together?! I always expect those sorts of relationships to not be long for this world.

TV Review – Loki Season 1, Episode 4

Loki Season 1, Episode 4 (Disney+)
Written by Eric Martin
Directed by Kate Herron

As I’ve been watching Loki, I can’t help but hold it up against Wandavision and The Falcon to determine where it ranks. It’s certainly better than that dismal Falcon mini-series, but not sure about its comparison to Wandavision. I think the first Marvel series had some great pathos, but the weirdness and surprises of Loki are appealing to me quite a bit. I loved the reveals in this episode and the exasperated reactions of Loki and Sylvie to them. And I hope you didn’t miss the mid-credits scene because wow, that has me excited for the next episode, which I want to get really weird with it all. Like this is the moment to just go bizarro and make the Multiverse as wild as it could be.

PopCult Podcast Mini – False Positive

Our first mini podcast episode is here!

Book Update – May/June 2021

Honored Guest: Stories by Joy Williams

I recently surveyed the crop of writers that made up the “freshman class” of Vintage Contemporaries. Vintage Contemporaries was a Random House imprint started in the 1980s and intended to publish paperback editions of literary authors of the era. This is where you would have found legends like Raymond Carver, Don DeLillo, Richard Ford, and many more. Among those writers was Joy Williams. Williams is a Massachusetts writer whose focus is often on the gradual decay of American life. She looks at it from all angles with middle-class characters who become disconnected from the communities they thought they would never leave. Adults are usually in failed or failing majors, and children are left to their own devices by grown-ups who are busy having affairs or in their own existential spirals.

June 2021 Digest

Features
My 40 Favorite Movies Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four
My Favorite Films of 1981
PopCult Podcast Episode 6, Episode 7
My Favorite Ned Beatty Performances

Weekly Wonderings – June 28th, 2021

We finally have our tentative moving date: August 18th. Things have opened up enough now that we can enter our new home country. We went through the calendar and made a list of checkpoints between now and then to have a clear map of where we are going and how to get there. There’s a lot of things to do. Some can be done right away; others will take time to get done. Overall, we are both very excited because it’s clear that things in the United States are not going well. As I write this, the Pacific Northwest is being swallowed by a historical heatwave. Residential air conditioning in that region isn’t equipped for that level of heat; I don’t imagine our air conditioning in the Southeast would stand up to temps in the 110+ range either. I don’t think we can outrun the climate collapse, but my wife and I are of the mind that we want to be somewhere where we can live out our lives comfortably for however much longer we have on this planet.