adaptation – Page 4 – PopCult Reviews

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.

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.

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.

Patron Pick – Maid

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 Bekah Lindstrom.

Maid (Netflix)
Written by Molly Smith Metzler, Marcus Gardley, Rebecca Brunstetter, Colin McKenna, and Michelle Denise Jackson
Directed by John Wells, Nzingha Stewart, Lila Neugebauer, Helen Shaver, and Quyen Tran

Maid is an American drama mini-series created for Netflix and inspired by Stephanie Land’s memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive. It focuses on Alex (Margaret Qualley) leaving her emotionally abusive boyfriend and struggling to provide for her daughter by getting a job cleaning houses.

I am going to start with the harsh bits. Although it has a lot of good qualities, there is a layer of cringe to Maid that resembles the storyline structures from the US version of Shameless. Their link to this is Molly Smith Metzler, a writer for both, and John Wells, executive producer and director for Maid, who developed, wrote, and directed for Shameless.

TV Review – Silo Season One

Silo Season One (Apple TV+)
Written by Graham Yost, Jessica Blaire, Cassie Pappas, Ingrid Escajeda, Remi Aubuchon, Aric Avelino, Jeffery Wang, Lekethia Dalcoe, and Fred Golan
Directed by Morten Tyldum, David Semel, Bert & Bertie, and Adam Bernstein

J.J. Abrams changed television as a producer of Lost along with Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse. Abrams’ “mystery box” philosophy inspired dozens of subsequent shows that sought to tell serialized stories on television that slowly spun out mysteries. While I enjoyed Lost for what it was, I don’t feel a strong urge to revisit it anytime soon; the heirs have never come close to capturing the excitement of that series. Lost’s strength was not relying entirely on its mysterious aspects and delivering character-focused solid stories. The flashbacks and what we learned about each person made Lost all the better. Silo is a new show from Apple TV+ and wants to be something like Lost. However, it was a slog for me to get through.

TV Review – My Brilliant Friend Season Three

My Brilliant Friend Season Three (HBO)
Written by Elena Ferrante, Francesco Piccolo, Laura Paolucci and Saverio Costanzo
Directed by Daniele Luchetti

I have been very impressed with how this show has made very young actresses appear to age into their late 20s/early 30s. It’s done through the talents of make-up artists, hair stylists, and wardrobe, along with the actresses’ physical and emotional performance. There are moments where the youth of Lenu might slip by all that, but for the most part, this season completely sold our two lead actors as maturing women, worn down by a society that looks all too similar to the one their mothers grew up in. That was the overarching theme of the season: Lenu’s realization that she was living a life as unexamined and pre-planned as her own mother, just with nicer furniture.

Movie Review – Freaks

Freaks (1932)
Written by Willis Goldbeck & Leon Gordon
Directed by Tod Browning

Tod Browning had a solid career as a director in Hollywood during the Silent Era and into the first decade or so of Talkies. He is responsible for a significant first in movies: the first Talkie horror film with Dracula. Based on a popular stage play (which was, in turn, based on Bram Stoker’s novel), Browning kickstarted the age of the Universal Horror Monster with this picture. It also gained him considerable clout and a blank check to make whatever he wanted next. MGM was interested in getting in on the horror game and offered Browning a shot at directing one for them. The filmmaker decided to go with the short story “Spurs” written by Tod Robbins. This film would be considered Browning’s magnum opus & disgusted the studio so thoroughly they cut it down from 90 minutes to 64, and the lost footage was destroyed.

Movie Review – The Silence of the Lambs

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Written by Ted Tally
Directed by Jonathan Demme

There are many glaring omissions in my film-viewing life, and this was one of them. I’d seen bits & pieces of The Silence of the Lambs over the years. Channel surfing in my twenties led me to see Clarice & Hannibal’s chats in prison, Mr. Lecter’s fantastic escape, and Clarice’s showdown in the labyrinth of Buffalo Bill. Yet, I had never seen the picture from start to finish while having seen the sequel Hannibal, 1984’s Manhunter, and the second version of that in Red Dragon. I’d also watched the first season of Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal. It seems silly that I’d never managed Lambs in total, so I decided to amend that for the horror season. Was it good? Of course, it was. It was also a reminder of how much this film impacted the crime/thriller genre for the rest of the 1990s and into the 2000s.

Movie Review – The Vanishing

The Vanishing (1988)
Written by George Sluizer & Tim Krabbé
Directed by George Sluizer

Each life hurtles through time & space on a course that the person who bears it can never truly predict. These lives cross with each other, but more often than not, they make no impact, brief encounters that dissolve. We can feel trapped in these lives, a passenger unable to exert their own will on the trajectory. Look at how so many people will simply follow the path of a parent or choose an identity based on how they will be perceived by the society around them. Even many “expressing individuality” are working from blueprints created by others, a manufactured uniqueness. But then some collide with your life, upending the sedate normality. What if our intersection with them is another moment we cannot escape, pulled into the event horizon of chaos? What is it to see something evil coming over the horizon and be unable to fight against its pull?

TV Review – My Brilliant Friend Season Two

My Brilliant Friend Season Two (HBO)
Written by Elena Ferrante, Francesco Piccolo, Laura Paolucci and Saverio Costanzo
Directed by Saverio Costanzo and Alice Rohrwacher

The subtitle of this season and its source material that the story is derived from is The Story of a New Name. This reflects the changes in Lila Cerullo’s (Gaia Girace) life and how one makes a name for oneself in transitioning from childhood into adulthood. Lila goes from being a Cerullo to a Carracci, and economically, she moves from poverty to comfortable working-middle class. For Lenu Greco (Margherita Mazzucco), she can leave their Neapolitan neighborhood but finds her roots as a child of poverty evident to her new acquaintances, causing others to view her as perpetually unrefined enough to ever achieve a higher status. Season Two is about the child’s transformation, whether having their dreams snatched away or transformed into something new.