PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Tampopo

Tampopo (1985)
Written & Directed by Juzo Itami

Food has been the subject of many films over the century. Sometimes, it is a central part of the story, like in Babbette’s Feast or Ratatouille, or just part of memorable scenes like Matilda or Hook. When a filmmaker gets food right in their work, they can activate your senses, taking images on a screen and turning them into a hunger for the dishes on display. Tampopo does this while remaining a nearly uncategorizable film. It’s a comedy and a drama and a strange series of vignettes about people’s love of food stuffed in around the edges.

TV Review – Tales from the Loop Season One, Episode Seven

Tales from the Loop (Amazon Prime)
Season One, Episode Seven – “Enemies”
Written by Nathaniel Halperin
Directed by Ti West

Ti West is a director that came across my radar back in 2009 with his Eighties horror homage, The House of the Devil. I enjoyed his follow-up films, The Innkeepers and You’re Next. Since the early 2010s, he’s done a few other lesser movies and started to pick up more television work. I personally enjoy his filmmaking style because it is nostalgic without being shallow, West understands how to set a mood and sit in that space instead of leaning into endless, unearned jump scares. His contribution to Tales from the Loop actually borrows more from the artbook’s sequel Things From the Flood and brings some very subtle horror elements to the series.

Movie Review – Crimewave

Crimewave (1985)
Written by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, & Sam Raimi
Directed by Sam Raimi

A slapstick crime-comedy written by the Coens and directed Sam Raimi sounds like a perfect movie. This was before an era where these names were associated with the sorts of film perfection we talk about now. However, Crimewave is an extremely disappointing picture that has hints of later brilliance. It’s most definitely a Coen Brothers story with Raimi’s style overlaid, which isn’t a combination that works out as good as it sounds. Raimi opts to go for a Tex Avery angle with characters existing in a cartoonish world, yet there are some terrifying and dark aspects in the mix.

Movie Review – Spies Like Us

Spies Like Us (1985)
Written by Dan Aykroyd, Lowell Ganz, and Babaloo Mandel
Directed by John Landis

John Landis is a filmmaker that helped shape American wide-release movies for decades that followed the 1980s. His own career hasn’t gone in a direction that matches, but his influence has resonated. He directed Animal House & The Blues Brothers, starting the transition of former Saturday Night Live cast members to movies. Landis helmed Trading Places and Coming to America, which set Eddie Murphy into a stellar trajectory. Beyond films, Landis directed Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and “Black or White” music videos, which have a hallowed place in the pop culture Hall of Fame. Most of his work, though, falls into the “okay” or “terrible” categories with Spies Like Us being one of those.

Comic Book Review – Absolute Carnage

Absolute Carnage (2020)
Reprints Free Comic Book Day 2019: Spider-Man/Venom #1, Absolute Carnage #1-5
Written by Donny Cates
Art by Ryan Stegman

During the 1990s, there was a character I disliked even more than Venom, Carnage. If you aren’t familiar with Carnage, he is Cletus Kasaday, a serial killer whom Eddie Brock shared a prison cell with. When the symbiote returned to bond with Eddie and break him out of prison, it also gave birth to another symbiote. This organism bonded with Kasaday to create Carnage. I always felt like the character’s only selling point is that he was “edgy” in look and behavior. He was just teeth and claws who killed people, a villain that felt more at home in Image Comics than at Marvel. Apparently, he is very popular because Marvel has sold many titles based on Carnage being there, definitely not as much as Venom but still enough to make me think he must have some sort of fanbase.

Movie Review – The Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club (1985)
Written & Directed by John Hughes

No name is associated more with teen movies of the 1980s than John Hughes. The writer-director had quite an impressive record: Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Outside of teen films, he penned and/or directed all the National Lampoon’s Vacation films, Uncle Buck, Home Alone, and the stellar comedy Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Hughes found ways to make comedies that appealed to broad audiences yet were smart with pathos. He also found ways to inject stylistics flourishes playing with the reality of his worlds, it never felt out of place but blended perfectly with the more realistic tones. The Breakfast Club is considered by many of his fans to be the quintessential Hughes teen movie.

Movie Review – Phase IV

Phase IV (1974)
Written by Mayo Simon
Directed by Saul Bass

Saul Bass is primarily known for his graphic design work in the opening titles of films like Vertigo, Psycho, West Side Story, and many others. Phase IV was Bass’s first and only foray into feature film directing. Anytime you get a movie made by someone working primarily in the visual arts, it’s going to be visually appealing but not necessarily following the standard narrative structures. Kubrick was a photographer, David Lynch is a painter, and so on. Panos Cosmatos has cited Phase IV’s influence on his own Beyond the Black Rainbow. These directors aren’t so much interested in narrative points and character beats as they are as in establishing a potent atmosphere. Saul Bass’s Phase IV falls right into that same category.

Movie Review – The Stuff

The Stuff (1985)
Written & Directed by Larry Cohen

Paranoia has been a chief component of modern life since the Cold War. In the 1950s, Americans were told to beware of “Reds” in their midst while the Senate conducted a witch hunt against citizens. This inspired the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which took its novel roots and reimagined them as a commentary on the Red Scare tearing through the country. Ever since, the concept of the masses being overtaken by an insidious enemy has seemed enticing for many directors and writers. You often have one or two characters who are on to the ruse but seem helpless against the enemy’s scope and scale. This was the type of story that inspired independent filmmaker Larry Cohen to make his satire on the modern corporate food industry.

TV Review – The Best of Moonlighting Part 2

Big Man on Mulberry Street (Season 3, Episode 6)
Original airdate: November 18, 1986
Written by Karen Hall
Directed by Christian I. Nyby II & Stanley Donen

This episode of Moonlighting hits on two aspects of the series at once, the metafictional flights of fancy and the simmer sexual tension between David and Maddie. David once again shows his ass, coming to a meeting with a client hungover. Maddie explodes as expected, but when she comes to David’s office to chew him out, but finds her partner forlorn. A close friend has died, and upon further scrutiny, Maddie learns it is David’s ex-brother-in-law. Maddie becomes obsessed with finding out more about his ex-wife and what led to their break-up. Bruce Willis has a wonderfully dramatic scene where we get to see a lot of David’s vulnerabilities. The icing on this particular cake is a dream/dance sequence of Maddie’s set to a song by Billy Joel and choreographed by the legend Stanley Donen (Singin’ in the Rain). The scene was unlike anything seen on television at the time, production quality, and artistry that had to stun audiences at the time.

Movie Review – Follow That Bird

Follow That Bird (1985)
Written by Judy Freudberg & Tony Geiss
Directed by Ken Kwapis

The late 1970s/early-mid 1980s was the era of the Muppets and Jim Henson. The world-famous puppeteer worked to show the audience what his creations could do and expand the public consciousness about puppetry. He showed us a comedic variety program with The Muppet Show, a road trip picture with The Muppet Movie, action & adventure in The Great Muppet Caper, and a Broadway-style musical with the Muppets Take Manhattan. Henson created work aimed at older audiences with The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. In the middle of all of this, Henson’s company decided to bring their phenomenally successful public television series Sesame Street to the big screen with Follow That Bird.