drama – Page 11 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Meantime

Meantime (1983)
Written & Directed by Mike Leigh

When I was younger and saw a Mike Leigh movie, I didn’t understand it. I was very much into certain kinds of art-house cinema that were more heightened in the stylistics, and the quirky working-class tone of Leigh’s work was confounding. Now, in my early 40s, I find Leigh to be brilliant. He understands the class divide and how ordinary people are pitted against each other better than almost any other director alive. Unsurprisingly, Leigh holds up Yasujirō Ozu’s slice-of-life domestic films as a chief inspiration. Leigh adds his British flair to the characters’ affectations, but the stories are very grounded, focused on the travails of working people attempting to make their way through an increasingly hostile world.

Movie Review – The Big Chill

The Big Chill (1983)
Written & Directed by Lawrence Kasdan

This may be one of the most misunderstood Hollywood films of the late 20th century. I’d never seen The Big Chill before I watched it for this review. However, I had heard about it from time to time. It was often framed as a shallow examination of the Baby Boomer generation. It’s a film concerned with that cohort of Americans, but I don’t think it’s superficial. The characters are certainly living their lives on the surface, but the film tells us many things about them, especially their flawed worldviews. The voice of reason in the film is the youngest character, who pretty much explains the picture’s theme when she says, “I don’t like talking about my past as much as you guys do.”

TV Review – Beef

Beef (Netflix)
Written by Lee Sung Jin, Alice Ju, Carrie Kemper, Alex Russell, Marie Hanhnhon Nguyen & Niko Gutierrez-Kovner, Joanna Calo, Kevin Rosen, Jean Kyoung Frazier
Directed by Hikari, Jake Schreier, and Lee Sung Jin

Even though we’re attempting to make a permanent life in the Netherlands, I still keep tabs on what is happening back in the States. There are people I love back there, so it’s important to know if violence escalates, the food supply chain is deteriorating, etc. One thing I’ve noted in the last year is a rapid increase in random violent acts, especially on the roadways. Driving in America has always been a particularly hazardous venture, but it appears things have gotten worse? In states where open carry laws have been relaxed, you can’t go a day without hearing about multiple road rage incidents that end in gunfire. The series Beef presented itself in its trailers and marketing as a show about how one of these conflicts escalates wildly out of control, and that was a pretty intriguing premise.

Movie Review – A Nos Amours

A Nos Amours (1983)
Written & Directed by Maurice Pialat

People often seem to forget that a vast ocean of thought exists within each person’s mind. Society does its best to halt our exploration of these complex inner worlds, but they remain a part of who we are, always waiting to be uncovered and mapped. You likely have noticed the same disturbing trend I have among mostly white conservative men, an aggressive push against women’s agency over their lives and bodies. They want the population to see women as nothing about vessels for men’s pleasure and laborers to provide men with their every need. But this denies that inner world, the complicated web of desires, needs, emotions, beliefs, and more that exists in women just as much as they do in men. A Nos Amours is a brief peek into that world, a film that also shaped the life of its star.

Movie Review – Terms of Endearment

Terms of Endearment (1983)
Written & Directed by James L. Brooks

Television was where creator James L. Brooks started, and that influence can be seen in his second feature film, Terms of Endearment. The production looks like a movie, but the plot points and character types feel similar to characters that would populate one of his many sitcoms. The difference is that Brooks was able to touch on the subject matter no network censor would have allowed on the air. Terms of Endearment is pretty frank about female sexuality (heteronormative, of course), and we even have a central character die of cancer. It is rare to have a beloved character pass away on a sitcom, but in the world of movies, it is easier to get away with those things. In this way, Terms feels like Brooks is translating the story structures and character beats he knows into a new format.

Movie Review – Lady Vengeance

Lady Vengeance (2005)
Written by Chung Seo-kyung & Park Chan-wook
Directed by Park Chan-wook

Park Chan-wook is a master filmmaker. If you read my review of Decision to Leave last year, you know how much I love this director. South Korean cinema is the most vibrant creative filmmaking scene we have right now, with a diverse array of directors making all sorts of movies that play to their strengths. Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is fantastic at making biting social satires, Hong Sang-soo (In Front of Your Face) crafts gently paced slice-of-life dramas, Lee Chang-dong (Burning) dark stories of psychological trauma, and Park Chan-wook has mastered the art of telling tense & violent thrillers. Lady Vengeance was part of Park’s Vengeance trilogy, which started with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (still on my Watchlist), Oldboy, and finally, Lady Vengeance. Throughout every film, he follows the response of a profoundly wronged person and explores the effects their quest for vengeance has on them.

TV Review – Kevin Can F**k Himself

Kevin Can F**k Himself Season One (AMC)
Written by Valerie Armstrong, Dana Ledoux Miller, Kevin Etten, Craig DiGregorio, Noelle Valdivia, Mel Shimkovitz, Tom Scharpling, Sean Clements, Kate Loveless
Directed by Oz Rodriguez and Anna Dokoza

The television landscape has changed wildly in the last few years. When I was growing up, my television screen was filled with cheery families in sitcoms and silly high-concept procedural dramas, ala The A-Team and Knight Rider. Something shifted in the late 1990s with the arrival of The Sopranos, the idea that television could feature highly dysfunctional people in everyday settings doing terrible things. From there, this would grow into something like Breaking Bad, Weeds, Better Call Saul, and more. Yet sitcoms remained. Everybody Loves Raymond and King of Queens featured the trope of the schlubby idiot husband whose wife tolerates his mediocrity.

PopCult Podcast – Showing Up/Sleepless in Seattle

From the present, we have a film about a struggling artist trying to determine if she has anything of value to say and where she fits in with the larger art community. From the past, it’s a film about falling in love but with some heavily problematic messages and weird stalker-ish, parasocial behavior.

Movie Review – Mysterious Skin

Mysterious Skin (2004)
Written by Scott Heim and Gregg Arakai
Directed by Gregg Araki

Growing up in the late 1980s/early 90s, I watched a lot of television. I have vivid memories of certain shows. Unsolved Mysteries, hosted by Robert Stack, was a frequent point of childhood terror that seems silly from the hindsight of an adult. America’s Most Wanted was not as consistently creepy, but a particular type of case terrified me as a child. When AWM would do a story on a child molester and/or murderer who was on the run, it scared the shit out of me. Being only 8/9 years old and homeschooled, I didn’t wholly understand what sex was, but I definitely understood that being touched inappropriately was bad. Pair this with the rampant homophobia in the culture, which was intensified even more through the lens of right-wing propaganda. I was served up in my homeschooling curriculum, and my view of gay men at this time was one of fear. I can’t say when it shifted, but by the time I was in college, I angrily defended gay people in arguments with some of my classmates at a private Christian college.

PopCult Podcast – Fast X/Succession & Barry

Whether your family are a quasi-cult of car ninjas, a media empire owning cluster of ghouls, or living in a doublewide on the plains homeschooling via YouTube this episode has what you are looking for.