2022 – Page 11 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)
Written by Dan Gregor and Doug Mand
Directed by Akiva Schaffer

So much nostalgia that you feel like you’re going to vomit; this is what American mainstream media feels like these days. Every week, another intellectual property is rebooted, remade, sequel-ized, etc. Most of it is complete garbage. Nostalgia is a type of feeling that appeals to very regressive, reactionary, infantile minds. People are reasonably on edge because Western civilization seems to have reached its zenith and is now in a spiral of decline. The Boomers were the first generation that began to dominate with nostalgia; we saw multiple television series from their childhood made into feature films. Nothing has rivaled the Millennials’ slavering thirst to relieve every Saturday Morning Cartoon and blockbuster movie they saw growing up. So it was only a matter of time until Chip ‘n Dale saw this treatment, shaped by the cynical nature of animated comedy.

PopCult Podcast – On the Count of Three/The Innocents

It all ended here. In more ways than one.

Movie Review – Everything Everywhere All At Once

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
Written & Directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert

Your life is all you know. We might imagine other possibilities, whether looking back in regret or curiosity about past choices, or contemplating what the future might hold. But, regardless of all of this, we only exist in the present, in now. We can’t ever go back and change things, and the future is eternally unattainable as it inevitably becomes now. Lately, the Multiverse has become a concept in the zeitgeist, made possible by numerous films touching on it. In their latest film, the duo known as Daniels have constructed a story that embraces this cosmic, near-incomprehensible concept’s fantastic and highly human aspects.

Movie Review – The Northman

The Northman (2022)
Written by Sjón and Robert Eggers
Directed by Robert Eggers

Robert Eggers has carved out a niche for himself as a filmmaker that attempts to recreate the feel of specific periods in humanity’s past. With The Witch, he captured the colonial paranoia of the fear of the wilderness. The Lighthouse evokes the birth of psychoanalysis and the expansion of the Western mind’s interiors. He does this once again in the Viking-centered The Northman, a picture that transports into the mind of the 9th century. Here the landscape is imbued with mystic power, and humanity believes that through faith & ritual, they can connect with these volatile elements. While not as profoundly esoteric as Eggers’ previous two features, The Northman is still a film overflowing with aesthetic richness and exploring complex themes.

PopCult Podcast – The Rise of Skywalker

It all ended here. In more ways than one.

Movie Review – Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
Written by Michael Waldron
Directed by Sam Raimi

When you hire Sam Raimi, you better be prepared to let him do what he does best. This is not something commonly found in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a seemingly never-ending series of loud, bland commercials for upcoming movies which are also commercials for upcoming films. However, there’s no doubting Multiverse of Madness or MoM is set up to tease Marvelites with the Multiverse and its long-term effects on the MCU. There is a clear cameo that has been teased in the trailers and commercials and more to be seen in the picture, but those just don’t entice me anymore. I want a good movie with a complete arc and well-written characters. Thank god for Raimi, who gives us just that.

Spring 2022 Digest

Features
Supervillain Spotlight – The Penguin
Supervillain Spotlight – The Riddler
Patron Pick – Tracktown (Matt)
Patron Pick – Good on Paper (Bekah)
Patron Pick – Syndromes and a Century (Matt)
Patron Pick – The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe [1988] (Bekah)
Book Update: March-April 2022

Book Update -March/April 2022

Savage Night by Jim Thompson

I haven’t read much noir, but I know that Jim Thompson was one of the premier names in the genre and is still a must-read. This was my first time dipping into his work, and wow, it’s some wild, fantastic stuff. The story is told from the perspective of Charlie “Little” Bigger, a hitman that goes against widespread expectations. He’s five feet tall, wears false teeth, and seems sick with tuberculosis. That’s all hidden beneath prosthetics and lifts, though.

TV Review – Severance Season 1

Severance Season 1 (Apple TV+)
Written by Dan Erickson, Andrew Coville, Kari Drake, Anna Ouyang Moench, Amanda Overton, Helen Leigh, and Chris Black
Directed by Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle

So Apple TV+ officially has its first great show. I was curious about the streaming platform at its launch in 2019 but didn’t find any of that initial batch of programs worth keeping up with. They weren’t terrible, just nothing that caught my attention. We watched the first and second seasons of Servant, but I haven’t found myself interested enough to watch the latest one. Then I started seeing a solid buzz about Severance, a show whose title seems so generic. I’d seen Adam Scott’s face in the marketing materials and thought it was just some workplace comedy I wouldn’t be interested in. Oh, how wrong I was. By the time we got to the final episode of the first season, I was fully convinced this is approaching Twin Peaks levels of good. In the same way, Lynch & Frost were using the tropes of the primetime soap opera, Severance has taken the workplace comedy and turned it completely on its head.

Movie Review – X (2022)

X (2022)
Written & Directed by Ti West

Slasher movies are so ubiquitous that it takes a lot for me to even pay attention to them. The main thing that drew me to this film was that Ti West was helming it. For those unfamiliar, West has become a modern horror icon thanks to his nostalgic yet never pandering films, The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers, to name a few. His strength is in delivering the core elements of horror films from childhood but putting a strange, compelling spin on them. If you saw the trailer for X and thought you knew what it was, then get ready for a surprise. I went into that film with a similar mindset and was pleasantly shocked at how unexpected everything was. West has made a wonderfully self-indulgent slasher in the style of Texas Chainsaw Massacre that has so many twists & turns.