science fiction – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Bugonia

Bugonia (2025)
Written by Will Tracy
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

In the West, we are no longer living in a shared reality with our neighbors. I think COVID accelerated this, with the internet acting as a pipeline of ideological sludge that has led to a backslide reminiscent of the Dark Ages, but with smartphones. I have a family member who has fully embraced a reactionary mindset, going so far as to become a flat Earther. When someone has deteriorated that far into mental illness, it is beyond the ability of their family members to help them; only someone professionally trained will have the patience, while I am too emotionally entangled. This person has always held fringe beliefs, but it was through the internet that they linked up with similarly delusional people; a feedback loop of insanity. Bugonia is a film about people who cannot accept that the source of so much suffering in our world is human cruelty and instead fall back on increasingly incoherent explanations.

PopCult Podcast – The Electric State/I’m Still Here

We look at two very different films about people living under oppressive connections. One is a bloated, charmless Netflix original. The other is a passion project about a family struggling to stay together in Brazil during the military dictatorship. Check out our reviews of The Electric State and I’m Still Here.

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.

TV Review – The Prisoner (2009)

The Prisoner (2009)
Written by Bill Gallagher
Directed by Nick Hurran

J.J. Abrams had a stranglehold on U.S. media by the late 2000s. Not just that, but films like The Bourne Identity and the shooting style of director Paul Greengrass clearly became a trend in film and television. These aren’t terrible styles to emulate for a Prisoner remake in that period. If we think about the increased paranoia post-9/11 surrounding the rise of the surveillance state, it seems to mesh quite well with the themes & ideas the original series co-creator & star Patrick McGoohan sought to explore. However, the original Prisoner was a product of the 1960s Cold War era. If you want to tell the story in a modern context, some changes must be made. I don’t think the changes this miniseries made were the right ones, though, and despite having a few clever bits, the overall show was a disappointment.

31 Days of Character Creation #22 – Mutant Year Zero

After trying out The Electric State I became a big fan of the Free League model of games. Most of them use a variation on their proprietary Year Zero Engine which is fairly quick and easy to play with. I’d be eyeing this game as I have been on the lookout for something post-apocalyptic that wouldn’t be a resources number crunching chore to play. I like the way this game feels, so I think it may be what I was looking for.

31 Days of Character Creation #19 – Death in Space

So I had a different ttrpg in mind for this day, but when I sat down and started working through it I found the character creation rules to be very poorly laid out and communicated. I think being a primary school teacher for over ten years has left me always looking for streamlined, visual, easy to comprehend tabletop systems. There are a lot of people who play and ttrpgs in the sciences or other technical fields and they often make their games in a way that makes sense to them, but not to someone new. As a teacher, my brain is always thinking about how that new person can be caught up easily.

31 Days of Character Creation #13 – Troika!

Troika! is a rule-lite OSR type of game that is incredibly unique. Part of character creation is rolling d66 (two six-sided die as numerals for a two-digit number) and that is your background. This covers your class as well and each one is special to the game and nothing you’ve really seen before.

31 Days of Character Creation #11 – The Wildsea

The Wildsea is one of the more unique and interesting tabletop RPGs to have come out in recent years. It borrows mechanics from several other systems, most notably Blades in the Dark. It’s world is one unlike any else, here’s the description from the official website:

Some three hundred years ago the empires of the world were toppled by a wave of fast growing greenery, a tide of rampant growth spilling from the West known as the Verdancy. Now chainsaw-driven ships cut their way across dense treetop waves, their engines powered by oilfruit, rope-golems, honey and pride.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Starforged: Messiahs Part Four

Read the previous part here

I had hoped to get this finished in 2024, but it took me a little longer. Hope you enjoy this final, extra long (nearly 7,000 words) final part to Messiahs.

[Begin a Session: Flashback reveals an aspect of another character, place, or faction]

One of the first things Gerard Linnaeus saw that made him want to go running from Dakhnour was watching a soldier from his house beat a frail al-Raml man to death for stealing a bowl of grain meal. The heir to the corporate house of Celadon felt a rage grow in him that had been there since he was a child. Now in his twenties, as he was being prepped to lead the House by his father, Gerard felt even more disgusted getting to see the Enclave treatment of the natives.

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.