drama – Page 8 – PopCult Reviews

Patron Pick – Monster (2023)

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month, those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Matt Harris.

Monster (2023)
Written by Yuji Sakamoto
Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda

After seeing Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2017 masterpiece Shoplifters, I was in awe. Watching his follow-up, Broker, was less moving of an experience. It’s a good movie, but it wasn’t as good as the first one I saw. While there is a body of work going back to the 1990s that I want to explore, for now, we move forward to the director’s latest film, Monster. I made sure I went into this film knowing very little other than that the plot focused on two middle-school-age boys. I’m so glad I didn’t know the story’s details because with each loop the narrative made back to its start, I was left wondering where we were being led.

PopCult Podcast – The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp/A Matter of Life and Death

It’s a World War II Powell & Pressburger double feature today. In one film we follow the storied life of a career soldier in the British Army as he watches the world change around him. In the other a British soldier gets a second chance a life that might be snatched away from him.

TV Review – Rain Dogs

Rain Dogs (BBC/HBO)
Written by Cash Carraway
Directed by Richard Laxton & Jennifer Perrott

While searching for a television series to watch recently, I looked at Metacritic’s best new shows on their 2023 list and noticed Rain Dogs at the top. It stars Daisy May Cooper, who I’ve enjoyed on Avenue 5 and Taskmaster, so I decided to try it. Sadly, I ended up not really enjoying the series. It was confusing because so many of the elements on paper are things I like, but when it all came together, it felt underwhelming. My biggest stumbling block is how life in poverty should be portrayed in the media and how it often gets portrayed in contemporary shows and television.

Movie Review – Day For Night

Day For Night (1973)
Written by François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard, and Suzanne Schiffman
Directed by François Truffaut

Like Jean-Luc Godard (Contempt), Francois Truffaut seemed like someone born in a movie theater. One of the French New Wave movement’s founders, Truffaut, felt cinema in a way few people do. They were certainly not the same and had a very contentious relationship as colleagues. Godard’s approach was to tear down norms, push back against expectations, and embrace a sometimes mechanistic view of the form. Truffaut was far more into the pathos of his work, wanting it to be relatable, often adopting a very sensual approach to his films. Day For Night was Truffaut’s self-reflexive movie, something for his longtime fans but also an exploration of why people make these pictures in the first place.

PopCult Podcast – Bunny Lake Is Missing/A Taste of Honey

It’s another week of pulling from the Letterboxd Watchlist, this time with the theme being the 1960s and England. One film is a thrilling mystery about a lost girl and the other is about a girl lost about what to do with her future.

PopCult Podcast – All That Jazz/Mikey and Nicky

The new movies we want to see just aren’t available to us yet. So we dipped into the ol’ Letterboxd watchlist and pulled out two classics from the 1970s we’ve needed to watch.

PopCult Podcast – Fallen Leaves/All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

We’re back with our first two films of the year. One is a Finnish working class romcom inspired by old fashioned movies. The second is a dreamlike expressionistic exploration of a Black woman’s life in Mississippi.

Movie Review – Salt of This Sea

Salt of This Sea (2008)
Written and directed by Annemarie Jacir

One aspect of the Palestinian struggle that I realize I can only intellectually connect with is the connection even those in the diaspora have to the land of Palestine. I can’t say I’ve ever felt a meaningful connection to any place I’ve lived that I couldn’t sever when leaving. I also don’t feel much of a connection to my murky ancestry going back to Ireland, as being a white person in the States means any semblance of cultural roots I have were forfeit for the glorious privilege of strip malls and fast food. So, my understanding of the themes in this film was less emotional than I might have liked, but I get why. This is an experience I just cannot have, but that doesn’t mean I cannot learn something from listening.

Movie Review – Paradise Now

Paradise Now (2005)
Written by Hany Abu-Assad, Bero Beyer, and Pierre Hodgson
Directed by Hany Abu-Assad

It was once said that the suicide bomber was the “poor man’s atomic bomb.” There’s an immediate revulsion many of us in the West have when we see stories or hear about suicide bombings. I think it’s the intimacy of the act. Rarely do you see talking heads on the news react so strongly to stories of drone bombings or Western airstrikes. The suicide bomb seems to be an outgrowth of the act of self-immolation, the act of setting oneself on fire as a form of protest. The argument against suicide bombings has been that they kill many innocent bystanders. I would refer again to the formalized attacks on civilian populations by the West that are not held to this same standard. Paradise Now is the story of a suicide bomber and seeks to understand why a person would feel as if they have no other options to be heard.

Movie Review – Divine Intervention

Divine Intervention (2002)
Written and directed by Elia Suleiman

Santa Claus runs across a hill near Nazareth in a panic. He’s pursued by a gang of knife-wielding youths. He runs out of steam. They catch up with him. Everything moves so quickly. Santa looks down. The hilt of the knife extends from his chest. He stumbles back. Collapses. That is how Elia Suleiman begins Divine Intervention, another of his vignette comedies. Is this a heavy metaphor about Western culture being driven out by the Palestinian youth, a shocking, dark comedic scene to grab the audience’s attention, or both? My answer is yes.