PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Captain Blood (1935)

Captain Blood (1935)
Written by Casey Robinson
Directed by Michael Curtiz

Michael Curtiz was born Manó Kaminer in 1866 Hungary. His parents were Jews, his father a carpenter, and his mother an opera singer. They were lower-middle class and had times where it was a struggle to put food on the table. Curtiz loved the theater as a child and even constructed a tiny stage in his family’s basement when he was 8 years old. After high school, he joined a traveling theater troupe and performed throughout Europe. At age 26, Curtiz took his first theatrical directing gig and even fenced on the Hungarian Olympic Fencing team that year. Just a couple years later, World War I would pull young men into a brutal conflict, including Curtiz. From there, he was carried to a burgeoning film scene in Germany, where Curtiz truly learned the craft. In 1926, he came to the United States and began directing for Warner Brothers. That filmmaking partnership would span 28 years and 86 films, some of which are the most acclaimed films of the era. With 1935’s Captain Blood, Curtiz would see his star soar and the best work of his career just beginning.

PopCult Podcast – The White Ribbon/Films of Michael Haneke

Ariana & Seth have a new episode focused on one of the great living directors.

Movie Review – The Empty Man

The Empty Man (2021)
Written & Directed by David Prior

If you were unaware of this film or saw the title in 2021 and kept walking, I wouldn’t think less of you. There has been a bizarre dichotomy in the horror of slow-burn art house fare and throwaway On-Demand garbage in recent years. The mid-tier horror film, much like mid-tier movies in general, feels somewhat lost. The recommendation of the Red Letter Media guys caused me to search out this picture and give it a view. I can honestly say I really enjoyed myself. This isn’t groundbreaking but does actually have a filmmaker thinking carefully about each scene resulting in some astounding cinematography and stylistic flourishes at moments. The story is also very unconventional, told in a manner that will have the audience wondering how the narrative will shift and change next.

Comic Book Review – Suicide Squad Volumes Three & Four

Suicide Squad: Rogues (2016)
Reprints Suicide Squad v1 #17-25, Annual #1
Written by John Ostrander (with Kim Yale and Larry Ganem)
Art by Luke McDonnell, Graham Nolan, Peter Krause, Keith Giffen, and Grant Miehm

Suicide Squad: The Janus Directive (2016)
Reprints Suicide Squad v1 #26-30, Checkmate #15-18, Manhunter #14, Firestorm #86, and Captain Atom #30
Written by John Ostrander (with Paul Kupperberg, Kim Yale, Cary Bates, and Greg Weisman)
Art by Grant Miehm, Steve Erwin, Rick Hoberg, John K. Snyder III, Pablo Marcos, Doug Rice, Tom Mandrake, and Rafael Kayanan

The first year and a half of Suicide Squad had writer John Ostrander figuring out what the book would be. This means several cast members rotate in and out, never having clear arcs. By this point, the core members of the group were established. Amanda Waller. Rick Flag. Bronze Tiger. Deadshot. Nightshade. Captain Boomerang. There were recurring team members like Nemesis, Shade, Duchess, and others, but they didn’t quite reach the level of development seen in these characters. “The Nightshade Odyssey” brought some science fiction dimension-hopping to the book, but Ostrander pulled back on that quite a bit and decided to center his stories in the global political sphere.

Movie Review – Cache [Hidden]

Cache [Hidden] (2005)
Written & Directed by Michael Haneke

Cache is a film nestled in modern French history, specifically the Algerian War. The French right-wing was becoming aggressive towards Algeria in the early 1960s. Algeria had been a colony since the mid-1800s, and its citizens had become tired of their abuses at the hands of the French. In October of 1961, the FLN, a nationalist political party in Algeria, called on their emigres in Paris to participate in a march. The police prefect Maurice Papon, who served in Vichy France, called on the police to take aggressive action against these protestors. The result was 200 Arab people being drowned or shot to death in the Seine. French authorities hid evidence and suppressed investigations in the wake of the massacre. At the time, only three deaths were admitted. By 1998, when reporters were given access to archives, the total death toll became clear.

Movie Brain – February 11th, 2022

Since coming to the Netherlands, I’ve been grateful to have about half a dozen experiences with “magic truffles.” These are sclerotia (kind of like the “fruit”) of Psilocybin mushrooms, so you get the same effects as when consuming shrooms. These are legal, but regular Psilocybin mushrooms are not because of an American tourist who didn’t regulate their intake well and ended up drowning in a canal in Amsterdam. That’s one American stereotype I don’t feel I adhere to, but I can’t argue with Dutch people about it. Americans are so repressed that they gorge themselves when they have access to something considered a vice. Look at food, alcohol, sex, the list goes on. My experience with magic truffles has been really positive because I like to read a lot before taking a drug and understand the best practices to have an optimal experience.

Movie Review – Time of the Wolf

Time of the Wolf (2003)
Written & Directed by Michael Haneke

Throughout his career, Michael Haneke has been interested in how the media will present information or events versus what experiencing those same things would be like. He’s often pointed to the screen as a filter that blocks humanity’s perceptions of the actual emotional weight of trauma. Frequently Haneke protects his audience from the sight of violence but uses sound to make sure they do not forget the pain inflicted on a person. Time of the Wolf reads as a response to apocalypse-porn popularized by director Roland Emmerich starting with the blockbuster Independence Day. These ends of the world are almost always bombastic, full of massive explosions, and ending with humanity triumphing somehow. Haneke refuses to leave it like that, and so he went about making his own film.

Movie Review – The Piano Teacher

The Piano Teacher (2001)
Written & Directed by Michael Haneke

With the new millennium came changes to Michael Haneke’s focus & themes. In his earlier works (The Seventh Continent, Benny’s Video, Funny Games), the director was concerned with critiquing the Austrian middle class and exploring a meta-commentary on our relationship to violence as depicted in the media. His first and only theatrical adaptation of a novel would be The Piano Teacher. The book was penned by Elfriede Jelinek, whose work is considered to be very angry and challenging in its stream of conscious-like prose. Nevertheless, Haneke manages to adapt her book by delivering it with his signature cold neutrality, and it certainly works to both tell the story of a very emotionally troubled woman while also showing sensitivity to explicit violence. Haneke does not want to hide violence from us; instead, he’s interested in communicating it in unexpected and powerful ways.

Movie Review – Funny Games

Funny Games (2007)
Written & Directed by Michael Haneke

Following its showing at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, a panel was held for Funny Games. Director Michael Haneke and his actors fielded questions from the press about his movie. If you are subscribed to the Criterion Channel, you can watch it. Over 45 minutes, Haneke became amusedly frustrated over the journalists and critics’ seeming inability to understand the subtext of his film. Unlike David Lynch, Haneke didn’t keep the greater meaning of his work close to his vest and was very explicit. He kept reiterating that the film is not concerned with the pathology of its antagonists or anything else that was surface level. Funny Games is a film experience in which the viewer is interrogated about the very nature of violence & entertainment.

TV Review – Search Party Season 5

Search Party Season 5 (HBOMax)
Written by Sarah-Violet Bliss & Charles Rogers, Starlee Kine, Andrew Pierce Fleming & Matt Kriete, and Craig Rowin
Directed by John Lee, Heather Jack, Sarah-Violet Bliss & Charles Rogers

I have been watching Search Party since its debut on TBS in 2016, and it has consistently been a show that felt like every season could be it’s last. And with each renewal, the series found a way to reinvent itself. First, it started out as a murder mystery, then a dark Dostoyesfy-ian drama, a courtroom trial show, a show about a psychotic stalker, and now finally, the fifth season. This final entry is a wild mix of different genres and tones, fully relinquishing any sense of grounding previous seasons might have had. This turn into cartoonish-ness might not sit well with everyone, but it does remain consistent in one way: examining and mocking the vapidity of privileged people.