drama – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Sentimental Value

Sentimental Value (2025)
Written by Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier
Directed by Joachim Trier

It is becoming increasingly harder to find humanity on the screen in the 21st century. It started when finance conquered Hollywood in a hostile takeover. For a long time, there were a considerable number of studio heads who balanced the commerce of film with artistry. That battle was completely lost by the end of the 2010s. With AI coming into proliferation, we’re now gazing out at a bleak landscape of soulless content that will make the commercialism of the 1980s look quaint by comparison. Yet this list of films I’ve been working on is full of filmmakers I believe are trying their best to maintain a sense of humanity in cinema. Their work does not make much money and is not seen by as many eyes as most of the films in your local multiplex, but they express ideas and themes that are essential to examine if we are to understand what it means to be human.

Movie Review – Marty Supreme

Marty Supreme (2025)
Written by Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie
Directed by Josh Safdie

2025 was the year we saw the results of the great Safdie Brothers split. Benny gave us The Smashing Machine, which also served as an opportunity for Dwayne Johnson’s reinvention as a serious, Oscar-worthy actor. It wasn’t a terrible film, but it didn’t evoke the same emotions in me as the films on my favorites list this year. I’m not writing Benny off; his performance and involvement in the television series The Curse was phenomenal. When it came to directing feature films in 2025, it was Josh’s time to shine. Marty Supreme was hyped to an extreme degree, which is always risky, but it ultimately lived up to that hype, emerging as one of the best pictures of the year while building on the themes the Safdies established as a duo.

Movie Review – The Brutalist

The Brutalist (2024)
Written by Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold
Directed by Brady Corbet

The immigrant has been the subject of a great deal of discourse in the United States for years, with 2025 being a moment when tensions boiled over. There is a convenient amnesia among many Americans who imagine their ancestors arriving on the Mayflower, choosing to ignore the fact that these settlers were invaders of an already populated land. The reality is that most white Americans are descended from immigrants who arrived much later, yet they pretend that the Irish, Italians, and other once-maligned “swarthy” races were always considered white, rather than persecuted in ways not unlike how immigrants from the Global South are targeted today. Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is a story about an imperfect person, an immigrant, a refugee, who brings talent alongside profound inner turmoil. He is not welcomed with open arms, but with a desire to exploit him and use him up.

Movie Review – Hard Truths

Hard Truths (2025)
Written and directed by Mike Leigh

In 2024, I did a deep dive into the work of British filmmaker Mike Leigh and fell in love. He has a profound love of humanity, and it comes across in his choice to tell grounded, slice-of-life stories. At age 82, he has given us his latest film, Hard Truths. This re-teams him with Marianne Jean-Baptiste, whom he previously worked with in the wonderful Secrets & Lies. As with all of Leigh’s work, he shows a trust in his actors through the use of improvisational techniques and respects the intelligence of his audience by never passing judgment on his characters. This is a film about difficult people and a refusal to stop seeing them as human beings deserving of dignity; something that feels particularly challenging in our current moment, but also something people have grappled with throughout history.

Movie Review – Plainclothes

Plainclothes (2025)
Written and directed by Carmen Emmi

Who determines what is and isn’t a crime? It feels strange to look back and realize that being queer in public was still criminalized in a variety of ways well into the 21st century in America. The specific crime highlighted in this film was known as “cottaging” in the UK and refers primarily to same-sex sexual encounters between men in public spaces like restrooms or parks. While I can understand the desire to prohibit public sex, since it involves people who have not consented to witness it, the laws were far more focused on marginalizing and punishing gay men for wanting intimacy. The reason so many men used these public spaces was because they were hiding their sexuality, and the reason for that was simple: if their homosexuality became common knowledge, they would be ostracized from society. This leads me to see these sorts of stings as little more than a way to further torment an already persecuted group of people.

PopCult Podcast – The Electric State/I’m Still Here

We look at two very different films about people living under oppressive connections. One is a bloated, charmless Netflix original. The other is a passion project about a family struggling to stay together in Brazil during the military dictatorship. Check out our reviews of The Electric State and I’m Still Here.

Movie Review – Osama

Osama (2003)
Written and directed by Siddiq Barmak

Over twenty years, during the US occupation of Afghanistan, an estimated 176,000 died as a result of the conflict. Well over six thousand US soldiers, contractors, and soldiers from allied nations were killed. What was it all for? It doesn’t seem like much that counters those deaths. Afghanistan has historically been a place where armies come to fail. Of all the films I’ve seen from Muslim-majority countries, this one felt the most regressive. The US equivalent would be regions of the States where right-wing militias are growing in power and enforcing their rule. I think it is essential to see this film not as a condemnation of Islam, a religion that has many positive aspects, but as a searing critique of patriarchy. Your average right-wing US pundit will always make it about religion because they ultimately don’t care about the oppression of women.

PopCult Podcast – The Seed of the Sacred Fig/The Room Next Door

This week we look at an Iranian film that depicts life for one family during the recent hijab protests in The Seed of the Sacred Fig. That’s followed by our review of Pedro Almodovar’s English language debut The Room Next Door.

PopCult Podcast – Vox Lux/The Brutalist

It’s a Brady Corbet double feature starting with a young girl who makes a deal with the Devil after a school shooting. She becomes a pop star whose life never seems to settle. Then, a Holocaust survivor comes to America where his architectural skills clash with the local tastes.

Movie Review – Julius Caesar (1953)

Julius Caesar (1953)
Written by William Shakespeare, adapted by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Once upon a time, I was a student at university who didn’t know exactly what to major in. I had chosen mass communications, but after taking some of the English prerequisite classes for all students at my liberal arts college I found I really loved those teachers and the subject matter. Upon becoming an English major, I had some new required classes. Two of those were Shakespeare: Comedies and Shakespeare: Tragedies. I wasn’t a stranger to the work of the Bard. I was homeschooled but still assigned Romeo and Juliet to read. An afterschool Literature Club that our local homeschool group formed had us read Julius Caesar and even performed excerpts from it at the homeschool group talent show. I got to deliver Mark Antony’s “Friends, romans, countrymen” speech which I am sure if I reviewed the crumbling VHS tape I’d pick on several areas of improvement.