adaptation – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Train Dreams

Train Dreams (2025)
Written by Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar
Directed by Clint Bentley

So many people speak about finding meaning in life. Something I’ve come to understand is that humans are awakening apes. We are clever creatures, cobbling together technology that can do amazing things, but we remain deeply blind when it comes to understanding our interior lives and forming meaningful connections with others. So much of our existence consists of things that simply happen, with little to no reason. We’re born to random people who may or may not be fit to raise us. We’re randomly born into an economic class that profoundly shapes the direction of our lives. Nature treats us coldly; a tornado can appear without warning and decimate everything you’ve built. Perhaps your economic class shields you from that devastation to some degree.

Movie Review – Queer

Queer (2024)
Written by Justin Kuritzkes
Directed by Luca Guadagnino

Luca Guadagnino has been on quite the streak lately. In the last three years alone he’s made Bones and All, Challengers, After the Hunt and this film. While he’s not been to everyone’s taste, I think everything he makes is worth a view and showcases his filmmaking prowess whether on a technical or artistic level or both. Guadagnino resists the temptation to dramatize desire into a standard plot and instead lets longing exist as visual aesthetics. The film treats obsession not as pathology or romance, but as a state of being. It is disorienting, humiliating, sometimes tender, often unbearable. This is a film you feel and if you feel it, the characters and their experiences will linger with you for a long time.

Movie Review – Hamnet

Hamnet (2025)
Written by Chloé Zhao & Maggie O’Farrell
Directed by Chloé Zhao

In 2025, I did a series on Shakespeare adaptations, which was a lot of fun because I got to introduce my wife to several of his stories. She was, of course, familiar with Romeo and Juliet and knew the names of several plays, just not the stories or characters. I got to introduce her to Hamlet, my favorite play, through Branagh’s adaptation and was happy to see her find pleasure in what a rich piece of art it is. Despite having been an English major and taking multiple Shakespeare classes, I didn’t really know much about the author himself. I don’t think that’s too dissimilar from most English majors’ experiences; he doesn’t get as much focus as his work does. And while this film is more fiction than fact, it attempts to bring a human face to someone who has become such a distant, iconic figure.

PopCult Podcast – Oops, All Nosferatus

A vampire from Transylvania seeks possession of a young woman and manipulates his way into coming to her home.

PopCult Podcast – The End/Queer

A group of post-apocalyptic survivors live underground and sing about their feelings. A heroin addicted writer hanging out in 1950s Mexico develops intense feelings for a handsome younger man.

Movie Review – The Ice Storm

The Ice Storm (1997)
Written by James Schamus
Directed by Ang Lee

In our series “Hazy Shades of Winter,” we’ll be looking at films set during winter that also exude the cold, lonely feeling that the season can often bring about. Winter has often been seen as a necessary time of death in many cultures, with the spring being a renewal period. As a result, wintery films often feature themes of grief and desolation or even more interesting, deep self-reflection. As you’ll see in this series, characters often come to significant revelations about their current status; this may be the realization that a marriage is over or the recognition that a person has lost their religious faith. In the winter, the leaves have all fallen away, trees are laid bare, and there is nowhere to hide your secrets.

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.

Movie Review – Arabian Nights

Arabian Nights (1974)
Written by Dacia Maraini and Pier Paolo Pasolini
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini would be dead a year after Arabian Nights’ release. It was the final film in his Trilogy of Life, preceded by The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales. Of all his work, it was the first to fully embrace queerness. Pasolini was a homosexual who existed in a strange tension with the Catholicism in which he had been raised. His work often looked to the past to comment on or understand some aspect of the future. Instead of focusing on the misery of the peasant class, Pasolini sought to display the joy experienced by those people the wealthier parts of society often dismissed. These classic stories that had shaped so many people’s imaginations were the perfect soil from which to grow that seed.

Movie Review – The Decameron

The Decameron (1971)
Written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

While Pier Paolo Pasolini was fond of adapting classic pieces of literature, he wasn’t keen on making them period-accurate. Instead, he sought to use these foundational texts of Western civilization as critiques of the contemporary world. Changes to details like locales were commonplace to get his point across. This is why he transplanted Salo from revolutionary France to the era of Mussolini in Italy. The Decameron doesn’t see a shift in time; it’s still set in 14th-century Italy, but in the southern region where characters speak with a prominent Neapolitan dialect. Pasolini saw this as a commentary on southern Italy’s exploitation at the hands of the wealthier north.

Movie Review – Medea

Medea (1969)
Written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

You hear about Medea’s homeland long before you see her. The film opens with the usurping of King Aeson and Jason, his son, being put in the care of the centaur Chiron. Chiron knows that one day, Jason will travel too far away from Colchis and steal the golden fleece. The film shifts to an almost documentary-like portrayal of an event on Colchis. We observe that the king’s own son is sacrificed, and Princess Medea, whose chief role is as a priestess, oversees the whole affair. It’s disturbing and portends trouble for Jason when he embarks on his eventual mission.