Category: comedy

Movie Review – Stranger Than Paradise

Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
Written by Jim Jarmusch and John Lurie
Directed by Jim Jarmusch

Everywhere looks the same. This sentiment is shared by Eddie, one of three central characters in Stranger Than Paradise. He shares this as he and his friends stomp across a snow-covered railroad track, feeling down & out. If you are from the States or have spent much time in the vast middle of the continent, then you know how concrete blasted, copied & pasted so many communities are. Corporate stores and eateries pop up like seeds planted in the asphalt. As someone who grew up in a small town with a main street littered with McDonald’s, CVS, Domino’s Pizza, etc., you do start to feel that any personality the place you lived in once had has been systematically replaced with dull homogeny.

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31 Days of Character Creation #5 – Flabbergasted!

Today we will be making a character from the unique comedic tabletop RPG Flabbergasted! This is the game as described on its official website:

Flabbergasted is a rules-lite and narrative-driven tabletop RPG set in the roaring 20s! Comedic scenarios and light-hearted adventures are at the heart of Flabbergasted, drawing inspiration from the likes of Jeeves and Wooster and Fawlty Towers.

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My Favorite Television Watched in 2024

X-Men ‘97 Season One (Disney+)
Read my full review here

I was skeptical of the animated X-Men revival. Like many others, I have been burned out on superhero shows and films for a while now. However, this was the one Marvel thing in 2024 that I actually enjoyed. It was probably aided by reading Chris Claremont’s 16-year run on Uncanny X-Men this year, where so many stories on X-Men animated old & new drew from. Stylistically the ‘97 revival felt like the 1990s version, but with slightly more sophisticated storytelling and some major upgrades regarding the animation. There were a few duds; the Jubilee/Mojo episode was meh. The season overall was fantastic. I was very happy to see characters like Nightcrawler added to the regular roster; it always felt odd that he wasn’t included as a regular. We get a big cliffhanger that suggests some twists for a second season. Hoping they can keep the quality levels just as high going forward.

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PopCult Podcast – PopCult Christmas 2024 Special

Ghosts visiting a jaded television executive. A mad scientist’s creation hoping to find a home among the normies. A Japanese POW camp becoming the site of a clash between soldiers and honor.

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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. 

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Movie Review – Celine and Julie Go Boating

Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)
Written by Jacques Rivette, Dominique Labourier, Juliet Berto, Eduardo de Gregorio, Bulle Ogier, and Marie-France Pisier
Directed by Jacques Rivette

I’ve noticed certain films rising in popularity, likely due to a recent restoration release. After decades of only existing in poor copies, we now have cleaned-up versions, so the films can be appreciated how their creators intended. Celine and Julie Go Boating is one of those films I see coming across MovieTok or being discussed online. I added it to this list because I was curious about what drew people to the picture. Jacques Rivette is a filmmaker whose work I am fairly unfamiliar with, but he came up with the New Wave filmmakers as a writer/critic at La Cahiers du Cinéma. I knew very little about this film other than it was very improvisational.

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Patron Pick – Pootie Tang

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.

Pootie Tang (2001)
Written and directed by Louis C.K.

Let’s talk about Louis C.K. For a few years in the 2010s, this stand-up comedian had hit the big time. He had a hit TV series on FX that allowed him to play creatively with the format and even push the line between comedy, drama, and absurdism. After about a decade of success, the allegations came out. Multiple women accused C.K. of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior over many years in several different settings. His main proclivity seemed to be pleasuring himself in front of women without their consent. These women were either comedians trying to break out or crew on the set of shows C.K. worked on. His career has never quite recovered, though he still has plenty of celebrity comedian buddies backing him up. Before all of that, he created the character of Pootie Tang for the Chris Rock Show.

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Patron Pick – Babes

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.

Babes (2024)
Written by Ilana Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz
Directed by Pamela Adlon

I went into this film with not the highest of expectations. I wanted to enjoy it, though. Ilana Glazer was hilarious on Comedy Central’s Broad City, though I haven’t been incredibly impressed with her work outside of that series. Pamela Adlon is an actress I’ve enjoyed the performances of, from voicing Bobby Hill to her more recent live-action turns. Better Things, her now-concluded FX show, is on my TV list to watch from beginning to end. All this to say, I wanted to give Babes a fair show, but my god, this is one of the worst films I have seen in a very long time. It has me reeling about how infantile media made for adults is becoming in the States, but maybe it’s always been like this, and I’m just perceiving it now.

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