2024 – Page 2 – PopCult Reviews

PopCult Podcast – Our Favorites of 2024

Books. TV. Comics. Video Games. Films. It’s time for our favorite things of 2024. Ariana and Seth share their thoughts.

My Favorite Books Read in 2024

Good Night, Sleep Tight: Stories by Brian Evenson

I have never been disappointed by Brian Evenson, so I was delighted to see his short story collection coming out the exact same day as Laird Barron’s new book. These two books helped improve my October, and I needed it. This story collection was a slight shift from Evenson’s normal fare. I noticed a lot of variations on the same themes (mothers, robots, the end of humanity) and a shift to more science fiction stories than just horror.

My Favorite Solo Tabletop RPGs of 2024

Becoming the Villain by There’s A Way Studios
You can purchase this game here
Read my actual play here

I didn’t play many solo journaling games this year, opting for games with more dice rolling and moment-to-moment action. I enjoyed this journaling game, which helped me create a villain for my Supersworn (Starforged with supers assets) game. Becoming the Villain uses tarot cards to unfold your future fiend’s history. You’ll track your character’s changing ambitions, goals, and motivations affected by the events keyed from your card draws. Allies very likely will become enemies. Precious resources will be destroyed and fuel your villain’s rage. For GMs wanting to have a firmer handle on their campaign’s BBEG, this could be an enjoyable resource during planning.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Starforged: Messiahs Part Two

Read Part One here

[Begin a Session: Important character is put in danger or suffers a misadventure]

Dreng Wraithus wakes with a gasp for air. He is lying on a cold metallic floor. A hand reaches down and lifts him up by the scruff of the collar of his black robe. Wraithus’s legs still flop about like cold noodles as he’s drug through the halls of this strangely humid vessel.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – The Electric State Part Six

Read the previous chapter here

One Year Ago
Stella Shaw lays on her back, combat boots up on top of one of several monitors she’d spent months scavenging for. With a little help from Lester, a local tinkerer, the teenage girl constructed a makeshift antenna she installed one of the watchtowers in the compound for the best possible reception. It was just her luck that she picked up a broadcast of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air coming from somewhere to the west. Down in what Stella’s aunt nicknamed her “hidey-hole” she was quite cozy. These series of reinforced tunnels might have triggered claustrophobia in the adults, but they were the perfect fit for Stella.

Patron Pick – Anora

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month, those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Matt Harris.

Anora (2024)
Written and directed by Sean Baker

Of Sean Baker’s films that I have seen (Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket, and this one), it is pretty clear he has an interest in sex workers. More specifically, Baker is fascinated with the class politics of being a sex worker. It is a job where the class divide is screamingly evident every second of the transaction. In this way, sex work is one field of labor that highlights the contradictions in the United States, where lies are fed to us from birth about the “American Dream” and meritocracy. It is also very important to Baker that these characters be presented as human beings so that the audience sees the desperation of our protagonists to escape their economic lot in life. He also doesn’t fear these characters being deeply flawed and often unlikable.

TV Review – Disclaimer

Disclaimer (2024)
Written and directed by Alfonso Cuaron

Alfonso Cuaron is a filmmaker who has delivered some art that wowed me over the years. Children of Men is one of the best post-9/11 films to have come out. Watching it now feels prophetic as a study of social collapse in Western societies that cannot handle the refugees they created. His Harry Potter film is the only one with merit outside of being part of the franchise. I was slightly less impressed with Gravity, but Roma is a fairly good movie told from a privileged point of view. I don’t always love his work, and Disclaimer falls into that ambivalent category.

PopCult Podcast – Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point/Flow

A family gathers at the matriarch’s home for the holidays in the early 2000s. A cat finds itself caught in massive flood and relying on a group of other animals to survive.

TV Review – My Brilliant Friend Season Four

My Brilliant Friend Season Four (2024)
Written by Elena Ferrante, Francesco Piccolo, Laura Paolucci and Saverio Costanzo
Directed by Laura Bispuri

I was skeptical going in. The cast of the show was going to be changed. It made sense. These were meant to be people living through their 30s and into middle age. Keeping on actors who were mainly in their early to mid-20s would make that hard to pull off. Metaphorically, it makes sense. For a long time, it is difficult to see ourselves as adults, so our self-perception is still that of a child. Then, one day, we suddenly realize we are adults due to a single event or a series of them. That child hasn’t really been around for a long time. Season four manages to pull this off, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t missing Gaia Girace and Margherita Mazzucco.

PopCult Podcast – Smile 2/Juror #2

A contemporary urban horror continues its path of destruction in a new life. A man serving on a jury realizes his connection to the crime being discussed and that he may have the means to save someone’s life.