romance – Page 2 – PopCult Reviews

Patreon Pick – Gaza mon amour

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 Bekah Lindstrom.

Gaza mon amour (2020)
Written and directed by Tarzan Nasser and Arab Nasser

The popular image of something and reality are often oceans apart, especially when we in the West conceptualize something. At the time of this writing, Gaza is something beyond decency, brutally ravaged by a genocide that just keeps going in broad daylight. That doesn’t mean life has always been like this for the Palestinians. They have had a persistent resiliency, even while walled off and treated in the most subhuman manner. The human spirit is a tough thing to extinguish. It isn’t impossible, but it can happen. Gaza mon amour is a film about the persistence of the heart in the latter years of a person’s life and how the desire for love lives on.

Movie Review – Omar

Omar (2013)
Written and directed by Hany Abu-Assad

I won’t say any more on this, but the ending of Omar is one of the most satisfying conclusions I have ever seen in a film, yet it still leaves a bittersweet taste in your mouth. This is filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad’s first writer/director gig. He’d previously directed but co-written with one or more people. While not having seen that much of his work, the breakout film Paradise Now has always resonated with me. I was curious to see what story he had to tell after such an intense character-focused narrative. Once again, we get another narrative about a young Palestinian man caught in difficult circumstances, his friendships being challenged, and a moment hurtling toward him where he must make a decision that will shape the rest of his life going forward.

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.

Patron Pick – Like Crazy

Like Crazy (2011)
Written by Drake Doremus & Ben York Jones
Directed by Drake Doremus

Improvisation is a complicated skill. When you see performers who are incredible improvisers, they can make it look effortless. The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual is a comprehensive textbook I’ve read through a couple times over the years, and it taught me a lot about what is happening during an improvised performance that the audience never sees and is likely not aware of. The performers operate at “the top of their intelligence,” meaning they act as a character while intellectually & emotionally analyzing the story and the relationships in a scene. This is immensely hard to do and makes it look so casual. I’ve come to look at improv through this lens, often impressed at how brilliant some performers are. Like Crazy is a film improvised off a 50-page outline. The problem here is the actors needed far more direction and structure for this to work.

Movie Review – Pauline at the Beach

Pauline at the Beach (1983)
Written & Directed by Eric Rohmer,

Eric Rohmer was the right age to join his colleagues from the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema in becoming a filmmaker. Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, whom he worked alongside as editor of the magazine, became the two most prominent names associated with the French New Wave. He did make movies, but not at the same breakneck pace as the others, and he didn’t receive the same level of acclaim until much later in his career. The filmmaker was very secretive about his private life, including that Eric Rohmer wasn’t his real name but a combination of actor/director Erich von Stroheim and writer Sax Rohmer. Unlike his colleagues, Rohmer outlasted them in terms of career length, finding his most significant acclaim in the 1970s & 80s. It was in the 1980s that he began a thematic series titled “Comedies and Proverbs,” with each film based on common sayings in French culture. One of these was Pauline at the Beach.

PopCult Podcast – Sanctuary/Rye Lane

Love is in the air this week on the PopCult Podcast. Our first film explores the power dynamics between a wealthy hotel heir and his ambitious dominatrix. The second film is about love blossoming between two young people in modern London.

Movie Review – Happy Together

Happy Together (1997)
Written & Directed by Wong Kar-wai

Wong Kar-Wai has been named by Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk) as one of his primary filmmaking influences. Both directors are less interested in intricately plotted narratives than powerfully atmospheric mood pieces. They like to focus their cameras on characters without any pressure for that character to grow or learn any lessons. It’s merely observing a person as they struggle with the challenges of their lives. Wong’s core theme in his work is longing, particularly how people long for each other or, in many cases, the idea of another person. Because this is ultimately a desire that cannot be satisfied, his characters often end up in some form of misery, haunted by what didn’t happen.

Movie Review – My Own Private Idaho

My Own Private Idaho (1991)
Written & Directed by Gus Van Sant

A person’s inner life can be such a vast, complex landscape. The way we process experiences & emotions may have some universality, but ultimately, the way you feel inside going through these things is something no one else can ever truly know. For the character of Mikey in My Own Private Idaho, almost his whole life is made up of this intimate inner world due to his chronic narcolepsy. He can never quite get anywhere or finish a conversation before passing out. Gus Van Sant tells his story from this character’s perspective, which means the audience sees the narrative in fragments. We’re in one place, then another, only to return to where we started. Did we really go anywhere at all? Or was this just the lovely dream of a lonely person with a very uncertain future ahead of them? Maybe it’s all these things. Perhaps the dream world is just as real as the tangible one for someone like Mikey.

Movie Review – Picnic

Picnic (1955)
Written by William Inge and Daniel Taradash
Directed by Joshua Logan

We come to the first movie in the American Theater on Film series that doesn’t work. I wondered why I didn’t hear as much about Picnic as other entries in this series I’m doing, and now it makes sense. Picnic is attempting something ambitious, it is one of the better movies in the series for cinematic visuals, but its core ideas are muddled and clunkily handled. There are cinematographic moments here that are absolutely stunning, and that’s what makes it sting so badly that the story itself is not well done. It should not surprise me that Picnic looks so good as it was the fantastic James Wong Howe behind the camera, one of the all-time great cinematographers. Does that man know how to light and frame a scene!

Patron Pick – Where the Crawdads Sing

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 Bekah Lindstrom.

Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)
Written by Lucy Alibar
Directed Olivia Newman

I know this movie is not made for people like me. However, it was a Patron request, and I honor those. If you loved the book and/or adore the film, you probably will not like my review. One of the best things I can say about my experience watching this movie is, “Thank god for the ability to speed up playback.” I successfully turned this two-hour-plus viewing into just over 90 minutes which I think is the sweet spot for this type of movie. I argue that most movies should clock in around 90; if they go over that, they must justify taking up more people’s time. This is nowhere close to being the worst movie I have ever seen, but that would have at least made it fun to watch. Unfortunately, it is a flat, passionless, inauthentic drivel like most American movies. It is not offensive but doesn’t make you feel anything. It manipulates rather than attempts to draw up some truth about the human experience through its story. Also, I see an absence of truth in advertising because not once do we get to see the singing crawdads.

A dead body is found in the marshlands of North Carolina circa 1969. It is local sports hero Chase Andrews (Harris Dickson), and the blame is placed on Kya Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a reclusive swamp lady. Through extensive flashbacks, we learn Kya’s life story, from being raised by a drunken & violent father (Garret Dillahunt) to her romance with Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith). Eventually, Tate leaves for college, which Kya doesn’t have access to due to her economic class. In Tate’s absence, she begins a relationship with Chase. But that is complicated with Tate returning after a long period of absence. Oh, the love triangle. Kya also embarks on a career as a nature illustrator, using her artistic gift to sketch and draw the lovely things she sees in the swamp around her. We also get a courtroom drama as the flashbacks share the spotlight with present-day goings on.

In the vein of The Notebook, this is pure melodrama. It’s not the kind I particularly like. If I watch a film in this genre, I would prefer things like Douglas Sirk’s movies or Todd Haynes’ takes on melodramas. The relationships in the picture don’t feel genuine; they are very much of the contrived Hollywood type that often distorts & presents a twisted version of how real romance & love work. As escapist fare, I think this will satisfy the audience looking for this sort of thing. I think the story is very much in the line of Pygmalion, My Fair Lady, and the other films & stories that follow the “diamond in the rough” trope. There’s a murder mystery added on to help differentiate it. The reveal at the end about the circumstances around Chase’s death was pretty good, but for me, it didn’t make up for the overall tone & quality of the picture.

Having recently revisited some Tennessee Williams stories via my May series titled “The American Theater on Film, Volume One,” I realized how lacking in genuine passion this story was. The romance feels cookie cutter, and neither male character ever felt like someone you could see a real girl falling for beyond just as a side fuck. The “artsy” young women I’ve known acknowledge the surface-level beauty of dudes like Tate & Chase and may even call them up when they are horny. But ultimately, they are looking for some depth to go along with the exterior beauty.

There’s such an inauthenticity in how these characters are presented. We are constantly reminded that Kya is a “dirty swamp rat” in the same way She’s All That was desperate for us to believe Rachel Leigh Cook was a dog. It is a suspension of disbelief that is such a big ask it becomes comical. In many ways, this is up there with the dreck Marvel puts out in that almost every person that appears on screen is insanely gorgeous when I know, having grown up in the South, most people do not look like this. How refreshing would it have been to cast people that look real? It would have added so much more to the narrative. But that is not why this was made into a movie. It was made for audiences to swoon over the “beautiful” people on screen. This movie didn’t invent this but man, is it boring to keep seeing it churned out year after year.

If you are an adult who has ever, let’s say, read a book, watched a television show, or seen another movie, then nothing about this plot will surprise you. It’s like a copy/paste of every melodrama made with little effort to spice it up. The male leads look interchangeable. The characters are all hetero. There are two mandatory kindly Black people whose entire purpose is to help Kya feel better about herself.

I think there is a real heart-wrenching story deep in the fluff that could have made a compelling movie. However, this focuses on nothing but the fluff. It’s part of a massive genre of disposable films being made in America. If you ever look at the weekly dump of streaming cinema, you’ll find an avalanche of pictures. They are a form of money laundering for a whole host of criminal organizations, both domestic and international. This is nowhere near the worst; it had a theatrical release. But you will forget it almost as soon as the end credits roll. The romance is undercooked and thus dull to watch. The camera does occasionally give us a beautiful shot of nature. If young people find some enjoyment in the movie, that’s fine. It’s not offensive. It’s just a big disappointing yawn.