PopCult Reviews

Short Film Showcase #6

Please, Kill Mr. Kinski (1999)
Written & Directed by David Schmoeller

In 1986, director David Schmoeller worked with notorious actor Klaus Kinski on the set of his film Crawlspace. As expected, Kinski was a nightmare to direct and continuously tried to find ways to throw a wrench in the production. It became especially terrible when Kinksi learned that Schmoeller went to the producers to get the actor thrown off the picture. This is a short essay film, a docu-comedy, sort of like a story Kevin Smith tells in his live shows. I haven’t seen Herzog’s My Best Fiend yet, but I suspect it covers the same territory with more depth.

Best of 2010s: My Favorite Comics of the Decade Part 1

These are the comic books that I enjoyed reading the most that were published in the last decade. You’ll definitely see some recurring authors and characters, signifying my personal bias. I know there are a ton of great books I haven’t read from this period and as time goes on I plan on reading some (look for a huge Image Comics read-through in early 2020). Please let me know of any titles not on my list as I may have not read them and always appreciate recommendations.

Fantastic Four by Jonathan Hickman (2010)
Jonathan Hickman came onboard Fantastic Four at the start of the decade with big plans for not just this series but Marvel as well. He adhered to that original Stan Lee/Jack Kirby of exploring the unknown and created an optimistic, diverse possible future. The best thing Hickman gave us, and what has been criminally underused since, is the Future Foundation. The Future Foundation was Reed Richards’ effort to cultivate the next generation of scientists, and it played with reader expectations. Of course, Franklin and Valeria Richards are part of the team, but Hickman also includes some adolescent Moloids, the android Dragon Man, and a clone of Reed’s foil The Wizard. Not only is this a great read, one of the best Fantastic Four runs we’ve ever gotten, but it’s also almost essential reading to understand this last decade of Marvel comics.

Movie Review – Wounds

Wounds (2019)
Written & Directed by Babak Anvari

Wounds is the film adaptation of Nathan Ballingrud’s fantastic 2015 novella “The Visible Filth.” The story centers on Will, a bartender at a scummy dive in New Orleans. One night, while tending bar, a fight breaks out between his friend Eric and another patron that ends with Eric slashed across the cheek. A group of teens using fake IDs scatter when they hear about the cops. As Will cleans up, he discovers a cell phone he thinks belongs to these young people. It’s only when he gets home that he opens the phone and finds disturbing pictures that hint at some sort of ritual performed to connect with another realm. Will’s life slowly becomes infested with a darkness at the edges, creeping closer, threatening to devour him.

Movie Review – Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (2018)
Written & Directed by Gus Van Sant

The film about cartoonist John Callahan begins the same way his life is composed, a series of fragments, time scrambled around. We see him recovered and then back at the bottom again, sneaking bottles of tequila in the alley behind a liquor store. His body lies motionless on the pavement, his Volkswagen Beetle totaled, all glimpsed before he meets Dexter and goes on the drinking binge that will change his life forever. We see him whipping at high speed in his wheelchair, cars screeching to a halt before we know the circumstances that put him in that chair.

TV Review – Best of Star Trek: The Next Generation Part 2

Q, Who (original airdate: May 8, 1988)
Written by Maurice Hurley
Directed by Rob Bowman

For its first two seasons, The Next Generation struggled to figure out what it was going to say that would set is apart from the Original Series and the feature films. “The Measure of a Man” was an excellent demarcation point of the showrunners realizing that the exploration of humanity through the story of Data would elevate the series. This episode is monumental because it introduced what is arguably the second element that distinguished TNG, The Borg.

Movie Review – Children of Men

Children of Men (2006)
Written by Alfonso Cuarón & Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby
Directed by Alfonso Cuarón

It’s been approximately ten years since I sat down to watch Children of Men, the film I put as my favorite film of the last decade, the 00s. A decade later, with a thousand plus more movies watched, I can see the cracks in the picture better now, but it still holds up as a significant technical achievement and vision of a very potential future on the horizon. Since Children of Men first came out, we have had global tumult including, but not limited to, the passing of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, which have been frightening signifiers as to the direction our planet is taking. Climate change has worsened, which lead to an influx of refugees and creates the very circumstances under which Children of Men’s future is born. All we are missing is the sudden, unexplained infertility.

Comic Book Review – Promethea Volumes 2 & 3

Promethea Volume 2 (2002)
Promethea Volume 3 (2003)
Written by Alan Moore
Art by J.H. Williams

Alan Moore’s second volume of Promethea is probably my favorite of the bunch as it spends time developing out the Promethea myth and the people who have had her power. By the end of the second volume, we’re going into the long chunk that boils down to a treatise of human existence using the Tarot and Qa’ballah as a structure. I always felt like I needed volumes of background knowledge to get what Moore was doing here, and as a result, I felt lost most of the time. I would argue that Promethea as a whole is not a good comic book series, too personal a topic, and too close to Moore for it to be enjoyed by most readers.

Movie Review – The Thin Red Line

The Thin Red Line (1998)
Written & Directed by Terence Malick

War movies should always be horror movies. Terence Malick seems to have had this in mind when he shot The Thin Red Line, a film made after a twenty-year absence. Malick’s journey adapting the novel by James Jones began in 1988, his producers agreed to help him bring the book to the screen. What followed was a decade of some of the most in-depth research a filmmaker could embark on. Malick consumed everything directly and tangentially related to the story. He read books on the reptiles and amphibians of the Pacific region, the Navajo code talkers, and immersed himself in traditional Japanese drum music. Malick’s ultimate vision of the Pacific theater of World War II was to portray the island of Guadacanal as “raped by the green poison,” a term he used to refer to war.

Movie Review – My Left Foot

My Left Foot (1989)
Written by Shane Connaughton and Jim Sheridan
Directed by Jim Sheridan

Christy Brown was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1932. Shortly after his birth, doctors determined that Christy had severe cerebral palsy, which left his limbs spastic and constricted. Even his throat muscles were challenging to move, which limited his speech, causing people to see him as cognitively impaired. The one limb that Christy seemed to have control over was his left leg, so he taught himself to write and draw using this appendage. He never received formal schooling save a short stint at a clinic for the mentally and physically disabled. As a youth, Christy became a quite talented painter and writer.

Movie Review – Mister America

Mister America (2019)
Written by Tim Heidecker, Gregg Turkington, & Eric Notarnicola
Directed by Eric Notarnicola

For seven years, writer/actor/comedian Tim Heidecker has been building a universe. It started with “On Cinema at the Cinema,” a film review show on YouTube. Heidecker and Turkington starred as versions of themselves, the former an arrogant prick and the latter a film buff obsessed with all that is mediocre. Worldbuilding occurred during the conversations the men had. This included Heidecker marrying a Japanese friend, having a child with the friend (Tom Cruise Junior), and the child dying because Heidecker became a strict anti-vaxxer. It was clear that Heidecker had a point of view to get across, the sort of profoundly twisted satire mainstream media doesn’t provide audiences with.