italian – PopCult Reviews

My Favorite Television Watched in 2024

X-Men ‘97 Season One (Disney+)
Read my full review here

I was skeptical of the animated X-Men revival. Like many others, I have been burned out on superhero shows and films for a while now. However, this was the one Marvel thing in 2024 that I actually enjoyed. It was probably aided by reading Chris Claremont’s 16-year run on Uncanny X-Men this year, where so many stories on X-Men animated old & new drew from. Stylistically the ‘97 revival felt like the 1990s version, but with slightly more sophisticated storytelling and some major upgrades regarding the animation. There were a few duds; the Jubilee/Mojo episode was meh. The season overall was fantastic. I was very happy to see characters like Nightcrawler added to the regular roster; it always felt odd that he wasn’t included as a regular. We get a big cliffhanger that suggests some twists for a second season. Hoping they can keep the quality levels just as high going forward.

Movie Review – Happy as Lazzaro

Happy as Lazzaro (2018)
Written and directed by Alice Rohrwacher

Since I saw Season Two, Episode Five, “The Betrayal,” of the Italian drama My Brilliant Friend, filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher has shot to the top of my must-watch list. That is hands down one of my favorite single episodes of television ever made. It so beautifully captured the transition of the show’s main character from a childlike perspective on the world to a more adult & fraught viewpoint. How Rohrwacher shot this character’s epiphany was one of the most realistic portrayals I’ve seen for that coming-of-age moment. I fell in love with her most recent film, La Chimera, which led me to put this film on the watch list for December.

TV Review – My Brilliant Friend Season Four

My Brilliant Friend Season Four (2024)
Written by Elena Ferrante, Francesco Piccolo, Laura Paolucci and Saverio Costanzo
Directed by Laura Bispuri

I was skeptical going in. The cast of the show was going to be changed. It made sense. These were meant to be people living through their 30s and into middle age. Keeping on actors who were mainly in their early to mid-20s would make that hard to pull off. Metaphorically, it makes sense. For a long time, it is difficult to see ourselves as adults, so our self-perception is still that of a child. Then, one day, we suddenly realize we are adults due to a single event or a series of them. That child hasn’t really been around for a long time. Season four manages to pull this off, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t missing Gaia Girace and Margherita Mazzucco.

Movie Review – The Battle of Algiers

The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Written by Franco Solinas and Gillo Pontecorvo
Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo

From 1954 to 1962, the French government was at war with the Algerian people. Algeria had been a French colony since 1830 when King Charles X decided to take the land. They blamed pirates on the Barbary Coast and their ransoming of French captives. In reality, French sentiments towards their increasingly authoritarian king led Charles and his advisors to dream up a foreign conquest to calm the people. In the first thirty years of French occupation, it is estimated that up to one million Algerians were killed, nearly a ⅓ of the entire population.

Movie Review – Arabian Nights

Arabian Nights (1974)
Written by Dacia Maraini and Pier Paolo Pasolini
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini would be dead a year after Arabian Nights’ release. It was the final film in his Trilogy of Life, preceded by The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales. Of all his work, it was the first to fully embrace queerness. Pasolini was a homosexual who existed in a strange tension with the Catholicism in which he had been raised. His work often looked to the past to comment on or understand some aspect of the future. Instead of focusing on the misery of the peasant class, Pasolini sought to display the joy experienced by those people the wealthier parts of society often dismissed. These classic stories that had shaped so many people’s imaginations were the perfect soil from which to grow that seed.

Movie Review – The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales (1972)
Written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

The Canterbury Tales is a text I have some history with. As an undergrad, I was an English major after toying with a Mass Comm degree for too many semesters. One of the classes I took was Chaucer and Medieval Literature, not because I necessarily loved that era, but because it was either a requirement for the degree and/or a bunch of my friends were taking it. I don’t remember which now. The class was taught by the head of the English Department, one of the best teachers at the university, and by the end, he had me interested in it all. One of the requirements to pass was that by the end of the term, you had to stand in front of the class and recite the General Prologue (the first 18 lines) of the Canterbury Tales.

Movie Review – The Decameron

The Decameron (1971)
Written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

While Pier Paolo Pasolini was fond of adapting classic pieces of literature, he wasn’t keen on making them period-accurate. Instead, he sought to use these foundational texts of Western civilization as critiques of the contemporary world. Changes to details like locales were commonplace to get his point across. This is why he transplanted Salo from revolutionary France to the era of Mussolini in Italy. The Decameron doesn’t see a shift in time; it’s still set in 14th-century Italy, but in the southern region where characters speak with a prominent Neapolitan dialect. Pasolini saw this as a commentary on southern Italy’s exploitation at the hands of the wealthier north.

Movie Review – Medea

Medea (1969)
Written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

You hear about Medea’s homeland long before you see her. The film opens with the usurping of King Aeson and Jason, his son, being put in the care of the centaur Chiron. Chiron knows that one day, Jason will travel too far away from Colchis and steal the golden fleece. The film shifts to an almost documentary-like portrayal of an event on Colchis. We observe that the king’s own son is sacrificed, and Princess Medea, whose chief role is as a priestess, oversees the whole affair. It’s disturbing and portends trouble for Jason when he embarks on his eventual mission.

Movie Review – Theorem

Theorem (1968)
Written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A visitor (Terence Stamp) appears in the lives of a bourgeois Italian family. This stranger goes about having sexual relationships with every member of the household. That’s the shy daughter, the repressed mother, the deeply disturbed father, the sensitive son, and the devoutly religious maid. The stranger barely speaks a word but seems to provide each person with the type of care & attention they are in desperate need of.

Movie Review – Oedipus Rex

Oedipus Rex (1967)
Written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pasolini had a deep interest in the mythic. In his early films, the mythic could be found among the peasant class that lived on the outskirts of post-war Rome as it was rebuilt into a modernized city, complete with mass consumerism. Despite being a very modern type of person – queer, atheist, communist – Pasolini was constantly returning to the past, especially to myths & fables where symbolism provided a mystical explanation for how the world came to be what it is. After experimenting with it in a short film, this was the director’s first feature-length color movie. The result is a picture where Pasolini pushes his filmmaking to new heights but still stumbles along the way.