comedy – Page 32 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – An American Werewolf in London

An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Written & Directed by John Landis

I don’t think I have ever been able to put my thumb on John Landis. He is such an enigma of a director to me. He makes fantastic comedies like The Blues Brothers, The Three Amigos, and Coming to America in the 1980s. In the 1990s, he churned out crud like The Stupids, Blues Brothers 2000, and stopped directing films in 2010. I would never say he’s my favorite director, but I don’t hate his work as a whole either. It just wholly stumps me when I think about his career building potential in one decade only to ultimately flounder in another. Right in the middle of his seemingly impervious series of hits came this horror-comedy that is much more horror, in my opinion, An American Werewolf in London.

Movie Review – Kajillionaire

Kajillionaire (2020)
Written & Directed by Miranda July

Miranda July began her career doing performance art videos, some of which I remember coming across online in the 2000s. Her first feature-length film, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), was a beautiful little indie about strange people trying to find connections with each other. Six years later, she followed up with The Future, another indie about strange people that didn’t have the widespread popularity of her first film but is still a fantastic picture. And then it was nine years of no original works from July. Instead, she made many appearances acting in things like Portlandia or in the fantastic Madeline’s Madeline. July also published two books of short stories in that time. In 2018, she announced she would be writing and directing Kajillionaire, known only at the time as a “heist movie.” But with everything that Miranda July makes, it isn’t that simple.

Movie Review – The Wolf of Snow Hollow

The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)
Written & Directed by Jim Cummings

I was overwhelmingly impressed with actor-writer-director Jim Cummings 2018 debut feature film, Thunder Road. He managed to find both humor and pathos in a character that easily could have slipped into caricature. In some ways, he has returned to that same character in The Wolf of Snow Hollow. He’s a police officer, sharing custody of a teenage daughter and tackling some deep-seated emotional issues. This is done through carefully tailored moments of humor & drama, all against the backdrop of a series of what appears to be killings at the hands of a werewolf.

TV Review – Pen15 Season 2 Part 1

Pen15 Season 2 Part 1 (Hulu)
Written by Sam Zvibleman, Gabe Liedman, Anna Konkle, Vera Santamaria, Josh Levine, and Maya Erskine
Directed by Sam Zvibleman

The first season of Pen15 was a wonderfully funny, absurd examination of female adolescence at the start of the 21st century. The creators and writers managed to balance the pathos & pain of growing up with inventive moments of comedy, most notably the two leads being played by thirtysomething against a cast of age-appropriate classmates. Season two took a slightly different route and ended up being much heavier & downbeat in its episodes’ conclusions, highlighting the melancholy nature of being a young teen in the 2000s.

TV Review – The Best of The Simpsons Part 5

The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show (Season 8, Episode 14)
Original airdate: February 9, 1997
Written by David S. Cohen
Directed by Steven Dean Moore

The Simpsons has always been focused on lampooning and critiquing the medium of television. The method of doing this frequently comes from episodes centered on Itchy and Scratchy, the in-universe children’s cartoon series featuring a hyper-violent cat and mouse. In 1990, the series did its first episode with Marge against Roger Meyers Jr. and the animation studio that makes Itchy & Scratchy. In 1997, with The Simpsons looking like it would last forever (and arguably has), the writers decided to comment on what happens when a show has been around for so long that it appears it might be going stale.

Movie Review – Bill & Ted Face the Music

Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)
Written by Chris Matheson & Ed Solomon
Directed by Dean Parisot

It has been 29 years since we last saw Bill & Ted and the world is a very different place or is it? Maybe the flaws we see now are simply amplified with time and were always there. We’re just living in a crisis point where you can’t deny that things are falling apart around us. We’re the grown-ups now, in our forties and fifties, and, if we have a conscious, feel a level of guilt about our inaction during those prime years of our lives. But the world hasn’t ended yet, and we still have time to do something. We just have to overcome our baggage to have a clear mind about what to do next. This is where the Wyld Stallyns find themselves in 2020.

Movie Review – Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey

Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)
Written by Chris Matheson & Ed Solomon
Directed by Pete Hewitt

Right away, you can see the budget difference between Bogus Journey and its predecessor, Excellent Journey. The first film had an $8.5 million budget while the sequel was given $20 million. The production design and score are very apparent elements of this change. The film opens in the future, which consists of more than just one room like the original. We have high schoolers in San Dimas attending a course taught by Rufus. We have many more practical effects throughout the picture, matte paintings, and even some early digital effects. Instead of a time travel rehash, the story goes in some more spiritual and cosmic directions. The sense of humor is still the same, and our leads are so charismatic you enjoy watching them in action.

Movie Review – Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)
Written by Chris Matheson & Ed Solomon
Directed by Stephen Herek

I vividly remember renting Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure when I was about 8 or 9. My mom was doing something that night related to the church, and so we got to rent a movie while staying home with our dad. I had seen the television commercials for Bill and Ted, but living in a family of four kids with only one working parent, we didn’t go out to the movie theater much. Video rental was how I saw most films, but they had to be PG-rated or lower, with some exceptions made for PG-13. I can remember loving this movie, not knowing who some of these historical figures were at the time, but enjoying the goofball duo that led the picture.

Movie Review – Fatso

Fatso (1980)
Written & Directed by Anne Bancroft

In 1980, Mel Brooks started his own production company, Brooksfilm. Under this umbrella, he would produce pictures like The Elephant Man, The Fly, and many of his own films like Spaceballs and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. The very first movie released from Brooksfilm would be Fatso, the directorial debut of Brooks’s wife, Anne Bancroft. Despite her very Anglo sounding name, Bancroft was really Anna Maria Louisa Italiano, and so her film is reflective of her very traditional Italian upbringing in New York City. Accurately, we see the toxic effect of a culture so centered around consumption using food to soothe anxiety and stress, while never tackling the underlying issues. The result is an incredibly mixed bag of tonal inconsistency and a lack of a clear point of view on the characters and themes.

Movie Review – Airplane!

Airplane! (1980)
Written & Directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, & Jerry Zucker

This is one of those films that had a profound influence on me as a kid, though I only knew it by the edited for television version I recorded on the family VCR. Airplane! is the origins of the modern spoof or parody film where a genre is taken and skewered with a non-stop barrage of jokes. Mel Brooks definitely helped pave the way with pictures like Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, but even those movies still had a coherent plot arc. Airplane! doesn’t care about the plot and sees it only as a delivery device for hilarious comedy. This movie still holds up today because it doesn’t couch its jokes in the contemporary pop culture of its time.