drama – Page 9 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – The 400 Blows

The 400 Blows (1959)
Written by François Truffaut and Marcel Moussy
Directed by François Truffaut

You’ll hear this annoying thing from hack directors who get justifiably reamed in the reviews for lousy work. They’ll say that people who are critics are just incapable of making their own art. It’s silly to say that because it tries to say that a thoughtful critique of a piece of art is invalid unless it praises that piece of art. François Truffaut loved movies since he was a child; as a young adult, he secured a job at Cahiers du Cinéma, becoming known as one of their most brutal writers. He earned the nickname “The Gravedigger of Cinema” and was the only Cahiers writer not invited to the 1958 Cannes Film Festival. After seeing Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, Truffaut doubled down on his dreams of making his own feature film. This led to The 400 Blows (alongside Goddard’s Breathless) and the birth of the French New Wave. It seems like critics can make great art, too.

Movie Review – Last Year at Marienbad

Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
Written by Alain Robbe-Grillet
Directed by Alain Resnais

Spoilers if you have not watched Twin Peaks: The Return. Like in the very next paragraph. You have been warned.

In the closing moments of David Lynch & Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: The Return, Special Agent Dale Cooper stands with Laura Palmer outside her home in the titular town. They’ve just discovered the woman living there is not Sarah Palmer and has no clue who Laura is. Cooper does not know what to do next but is an investigator. He stands, staring into the distance, trying to grasp onto anything. He utters the final line of the show: “What year is it?” Laura screams. Darkness falls. Credits roll over the image of Cooper sitting in the red room, Laura whispering something in his ear. We are unmoored from time; past/present/future mean nothing. What do we have if we don’t have time to cling to?

Movie Review – The Quiet Girl

The Quiet Girl (2022)
Written and directed by Colm Bairéad

This one got me. I could feel the lump in my throat during the first moments. By the final scene, I was a sobbing mess. Why? The Quiet Girl is a film of tremendous emotional depth, a story about empathy & human connection. It’s also a meditation on how the circumstances of life are simply not fair. Children are born to bad people. Good people lose their children in tragedies. It doesn’t feel right, but it happens. The universe can be a cold place. Yet, humans are capable of bringing great warmth into it. On top of the story, it’s a story spoken in Irish, a language moviegoers don’t often hear, a delicate, lyrical way of speaking that adds to the tenderness of the picture.

PopCult Podcast – Earth Mama/Eileen

The end of the year is approaching fast & with it come some fantastic films. In our first feature, we follow a young woman attempting to navigate an near impossible system to get her kids back. In the second, we see the world through the eyes of a disturbed young woman desperately in need of connection.

PopCult Podcast – May December/The Holdovers

It’s Haynes & Payne back at it again! In our first film, we follow an actress as she attempts to understand a couple whose lives are swamped in scandal. In the second, three people find a connection while spending the winter holiday at a boarding school.

Movie Review – Detachment

Detachment (2011)
Written by Carl Lund
Directed by Tony Kaye

I was a licensed elementary school teacher in the United States for ten years. Before that, I was a student teacher & substitute for three years; before that, I worked as a reading tutor under the banner of AmeriCorps for a year. Altogether, I worked in public education for fourteen years before resigning from my position in December 2020 when our district in Tennessee demanded all students would come back into the building without any vaccines available. Tennessee has one of the highest deaths per capita rates from the virus in the country. I have a former colleague whose husband died within a week of contracting COVID-19. He was healthy and only in his 50s. I know of former students continuing to deal with the effects of long COVID. This was my last straw in education.

Movie Review – Stroszek

Stroszek (1977)
Written and directed by Werner Herzog

Bruno Schleinstein was a German artist & musician whose life was filled with struggles. He was abandoned as a baby during the Nazi regime. Bruno was mentally disabled and became one of those orphans experimented on by the fascists. He never received visits from his family despite knowing who they were and that they were ignoring his existence. Even after the war, Bruno was shuffled from one institution to the next with little regard for his humanity. Along the way, he learned the accordion, and music would become one of the few things that soothed & comforted him. He was eventually dumped onto the streets and made his way as a street performer, being spotlighted in a German documentary about this subculture. This film caused Bruno to come into the purview of Werner Herzog. The director saw great potential in Bruno as an actor and cast him in The Enigma of Kasper Hauser. He followed that up with this semi-biographical film with Bruno playing a fictional version of himself.

Movie Review – Dogville

Dogville (2002)
Written and directed by Lars von Trier

I remember where I was when I first saw this film. That was twenty-one years ago. It was not until today that I really understood what the message was. Lars von Trier is a controversial figure, to say the least. His art has always been profoundly confrontational & abrasive from my perspective, but I don’t feel upset enough to not want to engage with it. He has undoubtedly spoken without thinking first, but that doesn’t mean he is wrong. I do believe translation between languages plays a big part. I have thought things but cannot articulate them with precision for years. Perhaps the argument should be made that artists have a tremendous gravity in choosing their words carefully, but who determines what it means to “choose words carefully.” Whose feelings are we being told to spare? Those in power have certainly co-opted the language of the oppressed to twist much of our perceptions into seeing the victimizer as the victim. It’s so insidiously done, so precise & sick.

Movie Review – Wendy and Lucy

Wendy and Lucy (2009)
Written by Jon Raymond & Kelly Reichardt
Directed by Kelly Reichardt

I’ve said it before here, and it seems to be an evergreen statement, but shit in the States looks fucking bad, folks. I got out in September 2021, so my experience is through what I read online (always with a grain of salt), chatting with people back there, and my lifelong pursuit of educating myself on the fundamental structures of our societies. Over half of currently homeless Americans are over the age of 50, yet you wouldn’t know it from the Boomers still clinging on to their spoils as they slip further between their fingers. Capitalism is a hell of a drug. I consider myself very lucky that I am where I am and have what I have. It’s not a fortune, but I can breathe reasonably easily daily. I find it highly upsetting that so many cannot do the same, certainly, those I know who have busted their asses harder than me. It serves to underline capitalism’s great contradiction: work hard, and you will be rewarded.

TV Review – Kevin Can F*** Himself Season Two

Kevin Can F**k Himself (2022)
Written by Valerie Armstrong, Craig DiGregorio, Sean Clements, Kate Loveless, Grace Edwards, and Jasmyne Peck
Directed by Anna Dokoza

There is a moment the audience should immediately expect after watching the first episode of this entire series. We get that moment in the series finale; it comes in the last 10 minutes. That was a perfect moment. It’s a shame that the journey that led us there was so bereft of interesting characters, captivating storylines, and a complete waste of a premise rich with potential to explore. Television has given us plenty of shows that play with genre & structure conventions, whether a series’ entire premise or one-off episodes that seek to explore a change in perspective. I was very excited about this with season one, but by the time it ended, I was contemplating whether to continue watching. There was only one more eight-episode season to go, so I thought, the hell with it, I’ll finish this thing. What a slog lay before me.