2023 – Page 4 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Kokomo City

Kokomo City (2023)
Directed by D. Smith

I have started to feel despondent about the state of documentaries in America. It seems everything that comes out is in the true crime genre. While some of these have been entertaining, like Wild Wild Country, most of them are fancier & longer Dateline segments. I want films that dive into the lives of interesting people or topics like the Maysles Brothers, Barbara Kopple, or Frederick Wiseman. I was so happy to find this doc, which is not just about fascinating people but very artfully made.

Movie Review – Priscilla

Priscilla (2023)
Written and directed by Sofia Coppola

I became aware of Elvis in the late 1980s. Having been born in 1981, I arrived a handful of years after the music icon was found dead, a result of drug addiction & a life not generally lived well. I have faint memories of a rerun of John Carpenter’s Elvis TV movie, starring Kurt Russell as The King. I also remember seeing tabloid news programs talking about Elvis sightings, guessing this was around 1987, the tenth anniversary of his passing. I have never felt any connection to the singer. I know his catalog of songs like anyone of my generation does. They were just in the pop cultural air. I’ve never watched any of his films. I’ve never sat and listened to his albums.

Movie Review – Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
Written by Christopher McQuarrie & Erik Jendresen
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

This year (2023), I watched/re-watched the entire Tom Cruise-Mission: Impossible oeuvre (I only get a few chances to use that word). As far as big Hollywood productions go, it’s not among the worst. I do hand it to the filmmakers involved that they always try to go with practical effects whenever possible, and CG is used in ways that never take me out of the films. Almost every scene is an actor in an actual location or set, not a motion capture/green screen. I don’t think Tom Cruise is an actor. Really, he’s the textbook definition of a movie star. The films under Christopher McQuarrie have improved with each entry, and I like including physical comedy as part of action sequences. These are silly movies, after all, so let them be silly.

PopCult Podcast – Passages/Cat Person

Two more 2023 releases are spotlighted in this episode. The first is a very modern love triangle centered on a filmmaker who is extremely difficult to like. The second may be one of the worst adaptations of a short story we’ve ever seen.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Starforged: Abyss of Shadows Part One

[Image source]

Read part two here & part three here

When I first started playing Starforged earlier this year, I wasn’t keen on just using the setting that came with the game. The beauty of Sean Tomkin’s Ironsworn system is that it is incredibly modular and easily adaptable. So, I wanted to play a science fiction-style game and did a rough sketch of the type of universe it would be. I wanted the entire toybox of popular science fiction tropes and subgenres, but all in one reality. This is what I refer to in my notes as the Megaverse. The physical distance between these places in a singular galaxy is vast, something abstract that keeps them separate enough but can allow for fun crossovers.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Dark Space/Cthulhu Dark Part Two

Purchase this game here.

Read Part One here

In the same way, I randomly rolled for crew members, I chose a similar method of exploring the Orpheus Station. On an earlier roll, I failed to get a map of the station from the tight-lipped AI, so our characters would wander through the facility trying to find an explanation for the sudden disappearance of thousands of people & the origins of the strange gray dust littering the floor everywhere.

PopCult Podcast – Earth Mama/Eileen

The end of the year is approaching fast & with it come some fantastic films. In our first feature, we follow a young woman attempting to navigate an near impossible system to get her kids back. In the second, we see the world through the eyes of a disturbed young woman desperately in need of connection.

Comic Book Review – Dark Knights of Steel

Dark Knights of Steel (2023)
Reprints Dark Knights of Steel #1-12
Written by Tom Taylor
Art by Yasmine Putri, Bengal, and Nathan Gooden

DC Comics has always loved a “What If?” story. The Silver Age, from the late 1950s to the end of the 1960s, was rife with covers that teased variations on your iconic superheroes. That trend revived itself in the Elseworlds imprint in the 1990s. The Silver Age stories often gave us alternate histories, while Elseworlds placed the heroes in new situations from space and time. Red Son saw Superman’s rocket landing in the USSR instead of Kansas. In Darkest Knight, Bruce Wayne receives the Power Ring instead of Hal Jordan. Batman: Red Rain showcased a world where Batman and many of his allies & enemies became vampires. With the big push for the new Multiverse, DC has recently rolled out more of these Elseworlds-type stories. There is DC vs. Vampires, which I previously reviewed, Jurassic League with humanoid dinosaurs, and this medieval set mini-series.

PopCult Podcast – May December/The Holdovers

It’s Haynes & Payne back at it again! In our first film, we follow an actress as she attempts to understand a couple whose lives are swamped in scandal. In the second, three people find a connection while spending the winter holiday at a boarding school.

TV Review – Scavengers Reign

Scavengers Reign Season One (HBO Max)
Written by Joseph Bennett, Charles Huettner, Sean Buckelew, James Merrill, Jenny Deiker Restivo, and Jillian Goldfluss
Directed by Joseph Bennett, Charles Huettner, Jonathan Djob Nkondo, Vincent Tsui, Rachel Reid, Christine Jie-Eun Shin, and Diego Porral

I’m not a huge fan of animated films & television. I have a soft spot for things like the films of Hayao Miyazaki or The Venture Brothers, but I don’t often gravitate toward animation. In the West, animation is still closely related to immature storytelling, leading to dreck like Family Guy or Rick & Morty. While I wouldn’t consider myself an anime fan, in the last few years, I’ve found what I’ve watched to be far more interesting than American crap. Satoshi Kon has quickly become a favorite, up there now with Miyazaki. While made by American animators, Scavengers Reign has the vibe of these Japanese productions. I was immediately thinking of Miyazaki’s Nausicaa as the characters explored the incredible alien life featured in this show. The vibe was a potent mix of chill with moments of tension & body horror.