drama – Page 32 – PopCult Reviews

TV Review – Kidding Season Two

Kidding Season Two (Showtime)
Written by Dave Holstein, Michael Vukadinovich, Roberto Benabib, Hilary Weisman Graham, Joey Mazzarino, Jas Waters, and Dylan Tanous
Directed by Jake Schrier, Kimberly Peirce, Michel Gondry, and Bert & Bertie

Kidding’s second season most definitely exceeded my expectations, but it’s a challenging thing to explain. The series has a deceptively simple hook, what if Mr. Rogers had a mental breakdown? But it’s so much more than that, and the first season was a very messy delivery of a complex and complicated story. Season two feels more focused and headed towards a definite ending. By the time you reach the tenth episode, this feeling like the end of Kidding, I honestly can’t imagine that there are more stories to tell.

Movie Review – Kramer vs. Kramer

Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
Written & Directed by Robert Benton

Much like 2019’s Marriage Story, Kramer vs. Kramer is very concerned about not giving the audience a biased story about divorce. While Dustin Hoffman is definitely the lead actor, Meryl Streep’s role as his wife who flees their home is not the villain. They are antagonistic for part of the story, but by the end, the film gives us a realistic finale. In real life, healthy people can’t stay enemies, mainly when there is a child in the middle. That’s not always the case, and maybe these characters are too aspirational, but the emotion and humanity of the situation feel very real.

Movie Review – The Deer Hunter

The Deer Hunter (1978)
Written by Deric Washburn, Michael Cimino, Louis Garfinkle, and Quinn K. Redeker
Directed by Michael Cimino

While this was intended to kick off my Meryl Streep retrospective, I wouldn’t consider it a Streep movie. Oh, she’s definitely a crucial supporting character in the story, and I will talk about her performance, but this film is more a prologue to that series. This is more a Robert DeNiro/Christopher Walken movie, and it is a damn good one. It hasn’t necessarily aged perfectly, and it’s not my favorite film about the Vietnam War, but it is a well-acted, intense, and beautifully tragic movie.

Movie Review – Ten

Ten (2002)
Written & Directed by Abbas Kiarostami

One aspect of Iranian society that Westerners seem to not fully understand is the rights of women inside that country. If you read up about contemporary Iran, there is an ongoing dialogue about extending the rights of women and activists pushing this. Once again, our myopic American viewpoint continues to judge others as a hivemind conglomeration of thought. Cue Abbas Kiarostami, who always seeks to blur the lines between reality and fiction, making his films strange narrative documentaries. We also have the dawn of digital video, which allows filmmakers to make movies fast and find ways to place the camera where film cameras could not go.

Movie Review – The Color of Paradise

The Color of Paradise (2000)
Written & Directed by Majid Majidi

One thing I came into this film series was wondering what influence the Islamic religion would have on these films. Iran is a type of presidential democracy with a co-equal (or maybe more powerful) theocratic branch. The revolution in 1979 had a significant influence on pushing Islam to the forefront of every aspect of Iranian life. As a Westerner, my perspective on Islam has been shaped by a strong Judeo-Christian bias in my youth. Now that I’m an adult, I can see with much greater clarity and have a better understanding of religion and dogma.

Movie Review – Taste of Cherry

Taste of Cherry (1997)
Written & Directed by Abbas Kiarostami

For a film about such an intimately emotional experience, Taste of Cherry chooses to distance itself, placing the whole of the movie in an almost purely rhetorical realm. We learn very little about the personal life of our main character and not much about the people he encounters during his journey. Conversations orbit around significant existential questions, yet the movie is very much about the beauty of human existence and frailty. This is also a movie that Roger Ebert gave a single star to because he said it lacked any forward momentum, which I think was sort of the point. This is a piece of ambient cinema, and it defies Western expectations.

Movie Review – Bashu, The Little Stranger

Bashu, The Little Stranger (1986)
Written & Directed by Bahram Beyzai

There is an emphasis on homogenizing foreign cultures into a monolith. This does a disservice to the broad diversity that exists inside these borders. We sometimes forget that national borders are artificial things, and people are often corraled inside sovereignties they have no direct connection with. Bashu, the Little Stranger, chooses to displace a Southern Iranian from the Khuzestan province due to the Iraq-Iran War. By moving this person into the Caspian north, we see how prejudices and cultural dissonance affect how we treat our fellow citizens.

Movie Review – Sunset Boulevard

Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and D. M. Marshman Jr.
Directed by Billy Wilder

Movies about making movies was not a new thing when Sunset Boulevard came along. What was novel about this film was that it wasn’t a story of rags to riches, a reflection on the dream of fame. This is a film noir version of those Hollywood tales. Our protagonist is a screenwriter who fails to make it big. The antagonist is a movie star who fell from great heights and never recovers. Much like in Day of the Locust, we have an examination of the effects of a system that promises wealth & fame that rarely delivers those dreams.

Movie Review – The Lost Weekend

The Lost Weekend (1945)
Written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder
Directed by Billy Wilder

After working with Raymond Chandler on Double Indemnity, Billy Wilder felt drawn to develop the novel The Lost Weekend for film. Chandler was a notorious alcoholic, and his addiction greatly affected the production of that film. Wilder admired the craft and art that Chandler brought to his writing but was struck with how awful he became when craving drink. Wilder decided to dive into making this movie as a way to better understand what was going on in Chandler’s mind.

Movie Review – Honey Boy

Honey Boy (2019)
Written by Shia LaBeouf
Directed by Alma Har’el

Filmmaking as therapy is a common theme in autobiographical movies. Just recently, I reviewed Pedro Almodovar’s Pain and Glory, which served as an outlet for the director to talk about aging and his physical ailments. Actor Shia LaBeouf similarly uses film as confession & therapy, though more intimate and raw than Almodovar. LaBeouf, if you don’t know, was a child actor on the Disney Channel before he reached higher levels of fame in Michael Bay’s Transformers films. The film jumps between these two periods, fictionalizing or obscuring the details, so it’s not about LaBeouf specifically.