2023 – Page 15 – PopCult Reviews

PopCult Podcast – Ali: Fear That Eats the Soul/Far From Heaven

Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows wasn’t considered exceptional at the time of its release but successive generations of filmmakers certainly knew what a fantastic picture it was.

Movie Review – The Five Devils

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The Five Devils (2023)
Written & Directed by Léa Mysius

The Five Devils opens and concludes with a character looking directly into the camera at the audience. That makes sense because much of the film’s narrative centers on voyeurism. So it is appropriate that we are reminded through bookends that the characters within the film could look back at the audience. That first glimpse is followed by a little girl sitting up in bed, and this cut implies the girl was dreaming this moment, that the gaze was directed at her. As the film progresses, this same little girl becomes the one spying on the adults, trying to piece together the cryptic things they say in her presence to create a more significant meaning. She wants to understand who these grown-ups are and how she came into being. What she discovers is how fragile her existence is in the face of different choices that her parents could have made. And while this movie markets itself and even feels like a horror film through the start, it ends up not being that at all, which left me feeling unsatisfied.

PopCult Podcast – Quadrophenia/Velvet Goldmine

Brits & music, two things that go together surprisingly well.

My Favorite Spring Movies

Carrie (1976)
Written by Lawrence D. Cohen
Directed by Brian De Palma

This qualifies on my spring list for it being centered around the big finale at the prom. It isn’t cheery, which is what you might expect for a spring-themed film, but wait until you see the rest of the pictures on this list. Carrie stands out to me because it’s a movie about an experience idealized by a segment of the public (high school) and shows it as the horrific thing it has always been for marginalized people. Where I grew up, high school and especially the associated sports have created an elite class of teenagers while the non-white kids and queer teens are pushed further and further to the edges. Carrie’s home life stands out to me here, with a mother devoted to her religious beliefs. Carrie’s mother is clearly a reactionary but, through dialogue, seems to have been bullied. This woman chose to throw herself into a system of belief that resulted in every culture she was terrified of. It’s only through Carrie’s…well, breakthrough that she manages to break the system that beats her down daily. One could argue Carrie goes through a process of renewal, much like the planet during spring.
Read my full review here

Movie Review – The Outwaters

The Outwaters (2023)
Written & Directed by Robbie Banfitch

Every few years, I am told in the film press that a new found footage movie will revitalize the genre and that this one is “actually good.” I take them at their word, watch the film, and end up underwhelmed every damn time. I loved the idea of The Blair Witch Project more than the final product, and every similar movie that has followed since has had the same problems. I watched Paranormal Activity, The Curse of Deborah Logan, The Last Exorcism, the Blair Witch reboot by Adam Wingard, and many more. In January 2023, I began seeing the buzz around The Outwaters, with reviews telling me this was a good found footage horror movie that would change people’s opinions. I kept an open mind. I watched it. And damn, if it didn’t repeat so many of the same mistakes all these other movies have.

PopCult Podcast – The House/Safe

Two unsettling films. One is a stop motion anthology centered around the same house and the horrors that await its occupants. The other is dread-filled exploration of the way modern life sickens us.

Comic Book Review – The Department of Truth Book 1

The Department of Truth: The Complete Conspiracy Book 1 (2023)
Reprints The Department of Truth #1-17
Written by James Tynion IV
Art by Martin Simmonds, Elsa Charretier, Tyler Boss, and John J. Pearson

Truth is difficult to come by these days, especially in the United States. I speak from experience. I was homeschooled throughout my childhood, the eldest of four children who were also entirely homeschooled. My parents’ basis for this decision was fueled by the Satanic Panic of the 1980s; I was born in 1981. They were Born Again Christians coming out of the Jesus Freak era of the 1970s, where the Christian Right fully secured its power base, preying on young people disillusioned by the previous decade of collapse. Growing up, our house had the expected paraphernalia of such beliefs. There were, of course, narrow-minded curricula from the usual suspects: Bob Jones University Press and Abeka. It was common during the afternoon to hear the hate-filled spewing of Rush Limbaugh coming from a radio in the kitchen. He was often joined by prestigious reactionaries and fascists like G. Gordon Liddy.

PopCult Podcast – Alcarràs/Poison

A family comes to terms that they are losing the land they have farmed for two generations. A queer director expresses his frustration in three fragmented narratives.

Looking at Art – The Bewitched Man

Welcome to Looking at Art. Here’s what we do: I just spend some time looking at the piece, writing down thoughts & questions I have. Thinking about how it makes me feel and trying to make connections. Then I will do some research and report back to you with any relevant details to the piece. Finally, I put all that together and contemplate how the piece’s meaning has changed for me & what my big takeaways are. Today’s piece is:

The Bewitched Man (1798)
Francisco Goya
Oil on canvas
42.5 cm × 30.8 cm

What I know about Goya is this: He was Spanish. He painted in the 17th/18th centuries. He has a painting of Saturn eating his children that is probably his most known work, at least to me. It’s speculated that he went mad due to the presence of lead in his paints.

Comic Book Reader – Aquaman: Andromeda

Aquaman: Andromeda (2023)
Reprints Aquaman: Andromeda #1-3
Written by Ram V
Art by Christian Ward

DC Comics’s Black Label imprint has produced some of the best work from the company in recent years, and that trend continues with this three-part mini-series, Aquaman: Andromeda. I won’t say this is my favorite Black Label book so far, that belongs to Catwoman: Lonely City, but it is a fantastic science fiction/horror story. My one wrinkle is that it didn’t feel like this was an Aquaman story but rather a story in which Aquaman appears. Instead, this is a clear homage to the work of writers like Michael Crichton, particularly his novel Sphere, but also elements of cosmic horror straight out of H.P. Lovecraft and the psychic manifestations of Solaris. The writing is handled by the insanely prolific Ram V, and the art is handled expertly by Christian Ward.