drama – Page 3 – PopCult Reviews

PopCult Podcast – The Apprentice/Last Summer

Well, that was a…week. One of our films purports to tell the story of a contemporary despot and the mid-century ghoul that helped to shape him. The second film is a French picture about a woman who takes a risk that could destroy her life.

PopCult Podcast – The Substance/Good One

A aging star goes to extreme lengths to become young again. A teenage girl goes on a camping trap with her dad & his friend only to discover the disappointing realities of growing up.

TV Review – Ripley

Ripley (2024)
Written and directed by Steven Zaillian

There are few protagonists in modern literature as challenging as Tom Ripley. He’s a captivating figure because he’s pretty pathetic yet so cunning. In many ways, Ripley is the shadow underdog, a guy who, by all evidence, should lose, yet he manages to commit multiple murders and steal millions while evading capture. Despite coming from a poor/working-class background, Ripley has evolved refined tastes mainly because he believes he deserves to live the best life possible. Other people are inconveniences most of the time, hindrances to him enjoying the luxury offered to the wealthiest among us. If ever there was a character to highlight the negative aspects of sociopathy, an actual condition that isn’t as one-dimensional as much media would like you to think. Ripley can’t seem to care about anyone other than himself; it troubles him, but it is not enough to stop his pursuit of comfort.

PopCult Podcast – Cuckoo/His Three Daughters

A teenage girl is taken to a strange German community by her family where dark secrets are hidden away. Three women gather in the apartment of their dying father to grieve and figure out who they are to each other when he passes.

Movie Review – Werckmeister Harmonies

Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)
Written by László Krasznahorkai and Béla Tarr
Directed by Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky

Janos, a philosophical young man in a small isolated European town, arranges the patrons of a tavern one night in a simulation of the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth. He uses this to tell a story about a total eclipse of the Sun. When the orbiting bodies achieve this conjunction, he tells a brief fable:

The sky darkens, and then all goes dark. The dogs howl, rabbits hunch down, the deer run in panic, run, stampede in fright. And in this awful incomprehensible dusk, even the birds, the birds are too confused and go to roost. And then… Complete silence. Everything that lives is still. Are the hills going to march off? Will heaven fall upon us? Will the Earth open under us? We don’t know. For a total eclipse has come upon us…. But… No need to fear it is not over. For across the Sun’s glooming sphere, slowly, the Moon swims away… And the Sun once again bursts forth, and to the Earth there slowly comes again light, and warmth again floods the Earth. Deep emotion pierces everyone. They have escaped the weight of darkness.

With that, he walks out of the tavern, and the rest of the film unfolds as a realization of this story.

Movie Review – Sátántangó

Sátántangó (1994)
Written by Béla Tarr and László Krasznahorkai
Directed by Béla Tarr

Seven hours and thirty minutes. That’s what will stand out for most people when they learn about Sátántangó. That is certainly something that makes it unlike most films. A runtime that long feels overwhelming, and that’s the reason Béla Tarr made this movie. Based on the novel of the same name, the film’s structure is a piece of wonder modeled after the actual tango dance. Broken into twelve parts, the story does not move chronologically and follows the steps of the tango – six steps forward, six steps back. It’s a daunting cinematic challenge, but I found it a very fulfilling experience and felt things I never had before about films.

Movie Review – Damnation

Damnation (1988)
Written by Béla Tarr and László Krasznahorkai
Directed by Béla Tarr

You must remove any of your expectations when you sit down to watch a Béla Tarr film. He’s a filmmaker I’d heard of for years and even seen films influenced indirectly & directly by him. The Chinese film An Elephant Sitting Still by his late protege Hu Bo was one of them. But I’d never seen anything by Tarr himself. I decided to watch his four highest-rated movies, made during the second period of his career, where he changed his style and produced work that is considered some of the finest films ever made. These are definitive slow cinema stories in no hurry and use their plodding nature to emphasize some cruel truths about being human.

PopCult Podcast – Rebel Ridge/Evil Does Not Exist

Two recent releases are in the spotlight. Jeremy Saulnier presents an entertaining & tense action film about a Black man against the local law preventing him from helping his cousin. Ryusuke Hamaguchi delivers a complicated a story of a rural Japanese village facing an outsider developer.

PopCult Podcast – Kinds of Kindness/The Teachers’ Lounge

Two tense new releases are our focus in this episode. Yorgos Lanthimos delivers a triptych of tales about twisted versions of love. A teacher in Germany becomes caught in the drama of thefts in her school and decides to record who is doing it.

Movie Review – Wanda

Wanda (1970)
Written and directed by Barbara Loden

The Actors Studio was founded in 1948 by Elia Kazan and his associates. The building in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, became a training ground for many of the mid-century’s greatest American actors, with Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando as two of the most notable. There are a host of character actors that developed their craft here as well. The most prevalent style of American acting from the late 1940s through 1980 directly resulted from what happened in this place. Barbara Loden was one of those people to hone their skills in the Studio. She would make a name for herself on the Broadway stage, winning a Tony Award for her performance in Arthur Miller’s After the Fall. In 1970, she wrote, directed, and starred in Wanda, an independent feature that earned her the description of “female counterpart to John Cassavetes” by the New Yorker.