musical – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Neptune Frost

Neptune Frost (2021)
Written by Saul Williams
Directed by Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman

American mass media is like a virus. It has infected the globe to the point that if you go to any movie theater that exists in this world, you will find US films playing, even if they are shown bootleg. This is not an accident, yet it’s not exactly a conspiracy. It is another salvo in the American Empire’s conquest of the planet since World War II. Neptune Frost is a Rwandan film and an Afrofuturist musical about living under colonialism. However, Lin Manuel Miranda and Ezra Miller produced the film. So, I have to wonder how authentic the film can be to Rwandan voices with these Westerners involved.

PopCult Podcast – The End/Queer

A group of post-apocalyptic survivors live underground and sing about their feelings. A heroin addicted writer hanging out in 1950s Mexico develops intense feelings for a handsome younger man.

PopCult Podcast – Wicked Part One/Y2k

We kick off a new year with two recent holiday releases. A young woman in Oz learns the truth behind the Wizard. A group of teenagers faces a millennial nightmare.

Movie Review – The Merry Widow

The Merry Widow (1934)
Written by Victor Léon, Leo Stein, Ernest Vajda, and Samson Raphaelson
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

By the mid-1930s, Hollywood was worried by the talk from Washington, D.C., about the content of their films. The puritanical didn’t like what they saw coming from the West Coast, and discussions surrounding potential censoring had started. To head that off, the film industry chose to self-regulate and had then-Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) president Will H. Hays lead the development of a list of restrictions the studios would agree to. Key among these was the removal of nudity (explicit or suggested) or “any inference of sex perversion.” These were among the Don’ts, but there was also a list of twenty-six “Be Carefuls” which included anything related to sex. Thus began an era where American cinema failed to acknowledge a primary tenant of the human experience. But before that was rolled out, we got one of the most expensive & impressive pre-code movies.

Movie Review – Topsy-Turvy

Topsy-Turvy (1999)
Written and directed by Mike Leigh

Following the success of Secrets & Lies, Mike Leigh got more financial backing for his next project. It would be his first foray into making a historical film, and of course, it would focus on something closely associated with the British. In this case it was the comic operas of Gilbert & Sullivan. While critics loved the picture & it won two Oscars for design, audiences did not show up like they did for the last one. Topsy-Turvy failed to make back its budget, but this would not be the end of Leigh’s exploration of England’s past. In the meantime, he gave us a very different style of historical film that doesn’t try to hide some of the uglier aspects of the time.

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.

Patron Pick – Wonka

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.

Wonka (2023)
Written by Simon Farnaby and Paul King
Directed by Paul King

Why? Why was this movie? Yes, I know it was made because a series of corporations made legal acquisitions of the film rights to Roald Dahl’s writings, and so they made the movie to recoup the costs spent on purchasing the rights with the idea of also turning a profit. What I am asking is why, from a creative perspective, does this film exist? What does this add to one’s appreciation of Dahl’s original novel or the character of Willy Wonka? Nothing about this film feels like it has anything to do with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory besides Wonka and Oompa-Loompas. I would go so far as to argue that not one of the three live-action appearances of Wonka on film does the book character justice, as much as I love Gene Wilder.

PopCult Podcast – Little Shop of Horrors/The Faculty

We continue our Halloween celebration with two creepy tales of invasions from beyond. In the first, our aliens strike in the form of flesh-eating plants. In the second they take on the role of authority figures in a high school.

PopCult Podcast – Afire/Theater Camp

One of the most prominent German filmmakers today delivers his latest film which prove disappointing. Then we hop the bus to go visit the grounds of a Broadway kids camp.

Movie Review – Tender Mercies

Tender Mercies (1983)
Written by Horton Foote
Directed by Bruce Beresford

Tender Mercies will break your heart, but that’s a good thing. It’s a film that is incredibly sensitive & thoughtful. It’s the story of an alcoholic, not during the midst of a bender or at their most self-destructive. Instead, this is a drunk who has lost everything that had any value. His career, his money, his wife, his daughter. He can’t get them back, but he can try and build something new. It’s a film whose presentation is simple, much like the quiet life lived in its desolate setting. It asks us how we can keep living when so much tragedy falls into our laps, some of it our fault and some of it happenstance.