comedy – Page 18 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon

Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2022)
Written & Directed by Ana Lily Amirpour

When I finally made myself sit down and watch Ana Lily Amirpour’s feature debut, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, I was very impressed with the mix of style & storytelling. It was atmospheric but restrained in all the right ways. The film was clearly a creator’s unique perspective translated into film, combining elements from various genres, and it just worked. I could see the influence of Iranian cinema in her work, but also pieces from pop culture and things she had come to love throughout her life. It made me excited about what she might do next. Then she released The Bad Batch, and I was overcome with embarrassment. That movie is awful. Maybe her third attempt would bring us back to that original magic; she was just experiencing the “sophomore slump.” Unfortunately, I don’t think she was.

Movie Review – The Banshees of Inisherin

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Written & Directed by Martin McDonagh

The jury is still out for me on my feelings about Martin McDonagh’s films. I know they are great showcases of his sly storytelling and filmmaking skill. I just don’t know how much I like them or not. It’s a strange thing I haven’t encountered with many directors where I acknowledge that they make great films, but I feel passionately ambivalent about them. I can’t say I have loved his movies, but I have been entertained and impressed by some of them, including this one. Perhaps it’s something connected to his Irish sensibilities, a constant struggle between seeking approval while having a fiery determination to tell anyone giving it out to “feck off.” McDonagh makes movies that are distinctly Irish (even if they aren’t all set there) and very distinctly him.

TV Review – The White Lotus Season Two

The White Lotus Season Two (HBOMax)
Written & Directed by Mike White

The first season of Mike White’s surprise HBO hit The White Lotus delivered an acerbic examination of the lives of the privileged while vacationing in another culture’s home. That setting was Hawaii, and the interactions between characters, both local and foreign, resulted in some pretty strong dark comedy about colonialism. For the second season, White drops all but one guest and switches the setting to a White Lotus resort in Taormina, Sicily. Once again, we have three sets of guests intermingling with the staff and local people, exploring ideas of ennui, sex, and alienation. The quality here does not skip a bit, but I did find that White was pulling his punches, being a little too gentle with the same people he would have skewered a year ago.

Not a Review, but an actual thing you can download

So I have been playing with the ChatGPT AI and making some incredibly stupid, yet hilarious things to entertain me. This weekend I came up an exceptionally stupid yet entertaining thing, Oh, Hello the Tabletop Roleplay Game.

If you are not familiar, these are two characters created by John Mulaney and Nick Kroll that are so weird and awful and funny. They have had an off-Broadway show, an on-Broadway show, a p’dcast, and have appeared all over television. I made a game where you get to play as them. That’s fucking hilarious to me. You can read it and download it below. Let me know if you play it.

oh hello the ttprg Download

TV Review – Avenue 5 Season 2

Avenue 5 Season 2 (HBO)
Written by Armando Iannucci, Will Smith, Keith Akushie, Jon Brown, John Finnemore, Tony Roche, Rose Heiney, Georgia Pritchett, Ian Martin, Marina Hyde, and Sean Gray,
Directed by William Stefan Smith, David Schneider, Annie Griffin, Ollie Parsons, David Schneider, and Armando Iannucci

I had an interesting conversation with a Dutch person about a year ago. I was curious as to what their perspective on America was. I had a strong point of view about The Netherlands because it was so different, and I wanted to know their thoughts on my homeland. They described the United States as a giant amusement park. It was always fun when they first arrived. There was no end of delightful distractions to keep them busy. However, they were ready to go home by the end of their visits. It was sensory overload, and they needed to get back to a grounded, centered existence. That’s what life is like here in The Netherlands in comparison. It isn’t perfect, but it’s so quiet. You rarely hear the noise you would hear in an American city. There are far fewer cars and more people on bikes. I’ve never been in a place so calm yet so full of people.

Movie Review – Four Christmases

Four Christmases (2008)
Written by Matt R. Allen, Caleb Wilson, Jon Lucas, and Scott Moore
Directed by Seth Gordon

I hardly ever enjoy disparaging another fellow Seth, but for Mr. Gordon, I will make an exception. He made quite an entertaining pop documentary in The King of Kong, giving us one of the great villains of the 2000s, in video game veteran Billy Mitchell. And to be fair, I don’t place the blame for this movie squarely on the director’s shoulders. Watching Four Christmases, something was happening in the background that most viewers likely didn’t notice. Even with my attention to detail, it took me a few days after watching the picture for all the pieces to come together. It was a Christmas movie starring Jon Favreau and Mary Steenburgen, and the cartoon level slapstick and the proliferation of cameo performances by well-known faces and…is that Peter Billingsley (A Christmas Story) as a ticket agent? When I saw New Line Cinema distributed the picture, it all suddenly made sense. Four Christmases was an attempt (as ridiculous as this sounds) to squeeze more money from the audience that loved Elf.

Movie Review – Deck the Halls

Deck the Halls (2006)
Written by Matt Corman, Chris Ord, and Don Rhymer
Directed by John Whitesell

Surviving Christmas is objectively the worst holiday film I have ever seen. However, Deck the Halls does not lag far behind. What redeems it only the slightest is Danny Devito. Without him, the movie would have been unwatchable. I try not to shit on directors too much; just like actors, movie-making is a job for them, and you often take work you aren’t excited about because it affords you opportunities down the road. However, John Whitesell has just cultivated a career of utter shit. Before directing this Christmas flick, Whitesell gave us such gems as Jamie Kennedy’s Malibu’s Most Wanted and Big Momma’s House 2. You’ll be happy to know that Whitesell was able to keep cranking ’em out and went on to direct Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son. Unfortunately, we face this pedigree when sitting down to watch Deck the Halls.

Movie Review – The Holiday

The Holiday (2006)
Written & Directed by Nancy Meyers

I don’t really enjoy much of Nora Ephron’s work. It’s just not my taste, but I acknowledge there are things I like. Despite knowing it is such a flawed picture, I have a soft spot for My Blue Heaven. Ephron’s closest contemporary is Nancy Meyers. Both women were gaining steam during the same period, and they made films targeted at women…well, white women. Where Ephron can be playful & inventive, even if it doesn’t always work (see Bewitched), Meyers consistently wallows in indulgent upper-middle-class fluff. I actually went into The Holiday with a moderate amount of open-mindedness. For years, I heard people defend the movie citing the Kate Winslet/Jack Black half of the picture as worthwhile. I like both those performers and decided to include this in my A Very 2000s Christmas series and was looking forward to them.

Movie Review – The Family Stone

The Family Stone (2005)
Written & Directed by Thomas Bezucha

To say The Family Stone is the least bad movie out of the seven I have watched for this series would be accurate, but also not a sign that I enjoyed watching it. I just suffered the least amount during this one. Everything about the story would work better as part of a television series. You have a family dynamic with one person coming from outside, conflict arises, and we get a maudlin sitcom-ish happy ending. The movie is confusing in who this is trying to appeal to as it features incredibly unlikable characters (even the ones we are supposed to like) but then is also wall-to-wall unfunny when it attempts comedy yet also poor at its attempts for pathos.

Movie Review – Christmas With The Kranks

Christmas With The Kranks (2004)
Written by Chris Columbus
Directed by Joe Roth

There is an air of nastiness, spitefulness & meanness in the Christmas films of this era. It wasn’t just in the holiday pictures, but if you looked at comedies and action flicks of the period, you find the same simmering hatred of humanity just oozing out of every pore. It could be argued that Chris Columbus is one of the chief architects of this trend. His duology of Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York seeded American holiday cinema with an air of cruelty. But cruelty has always been present in America, especially in our stories. Look at the deluge of racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc., et al., ad infinitum. Americans (and I am one of them) are mean people because of social conditioning under capitalism. Competition supersedes cooperation. Cruelty outweighs kindness.