PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Sátántangó

Sátántangó (1994)
Written by Béla Tarr and László Krasznahorkai
Directed by Béla Tarr

Seven hours and thirty minutes. That’s what will stand out for most people when they learn about Sátántangó. That is certainly something that makes it unlike most films. A runtime that long feels overwhelming, and that’s the reason Béla Tarr made this movie. Based on the novel of the same name, the film’s structure is a piece of wonder modeled after the actual tango dance. Broken into twelve parts, the story does not move chronologically and follows the steps of the tango – six steps forward, six steps back. It’s a daunting cinematic challenge, but I found it a very fulfilling experience and felt things I never had before about films.

Comic Book Review – X-Men by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee Omnibus Volume One

X-Men by Chris Claremont & Jim Lee Omnibus Volume One (2021)
Reprints Uncanny X-Men #244-269, X-Men Annual #13, and Classic X-Men #39
Written by Chris Claremont and Ann Nocenti
Art by Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, Rob Liefeld, Rick Leonardi, Kieron Dwyer, Bill Jaaska, Whilce Portacio, Mike Collins, Dan Green, Steve Leialoha, Kent Williams, Scott Williams, Josef Rubenstein, and Art Thibert

Following the conclusion of Inferno, Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men entered a strange period. He would wrap up the Australia-era team only to disband the X-Men. Yet the comic would continue. Instead of team-centered stories, the book became a rotating anthology about mutants who had been or were associated with the X-Men. There wasn’t a team officially bearing that name for nearly a year, but the stories continued. What was happening was a showdown between Claremont and new line editor Bob Harras.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Supersworn: The Victory Academy Part Five

Read the previous chapter here

[Begin a Session: External factors create new danger, urgency, or importance for a quest]
Thread: Alien Tech Aftermath
Oracle: Find Target

Everything fell apart for Ryker Vane the day the Space Agents filled the sky above his home world, Essifum. Vane’s tribe consisted of pacifist farmers. It was the Space Agents’ war against Bale and his Deathvoid Inquisitors that ended this idyll. Crops were burnt and houses razed as both cosmic forces battled, taking little heed of the innocents caught in the middle. Ryker would learn that to many, the Space Agents were considered heroes. He found the truth to be far different.

Movie Review – Damnation

Damnation (1988)
Written by Béla Tarr and László Krasznahorkai
Directed by Béla Tarr

You must remove any of your expectations when you sit down to watch a Béla Tarr film. He’s a filmmaker I’d heard of for years and even seen films influenced indirectly & directly by him. The Chinese film An Elephant Sitting Still by his late protege Hu Bo was one of them. But I’d never seen anything by Tarr himself. I decided to watch his four highest-rated movies, made during the second period of his career, where he changed his style and produced work that is considered some of the finest films ever made. These are definitive slow cinema stories in no hurry and use their plodding nature to emphasize some cruel truths about being human.

PopCult Podcast – Rebel Ridge/Evil Does Not Exist

Two recent releases are in the spotlight. Jeremy Saulnier presents an entertaining & tense action film about a Black man against the local law preventing him from helping his cousin. Ryusuke Hamaguchi delivers a complicated a story of a rural Japanese village facing an outsider developer.

Comic Book Review – X-Men: Inferno Omnibus

X-Men: Inferno Omnibus (2018)
Reprints X-Factor #33-40, X-Factor Annual #4, X-Terminators #1-4, Uncanny X-Men #239-243 and New Mutants #71-73
Written by Chris Claremont, Louise Simonson, and Mark Gruenwald
Art by Marc Silvestri, Walter Simonson, Jon Bogdanove, Terry Shoemaker, Bret Blevins, Jim Fern, Rob Liefeld, Dan Green, Bob Wiacek, Al Williamson, Al Migrom, Joe Rubenstein, Mike Manley, and Hilary Barta

For five years, Madelyne Pryor had existed as a mystery in the X-Men corner of the Marvel Universe. A few years after losing Jean Grey, Cyclops met her doppelganger, an Alaskan pilot. Their love blossomed, they married, and they even had a baby. But then Jean miraculously returned, and Cyclops abandoned his wife and child so that he could head back to New York City as part of X-Factor. Maddie was attacked by the Marauders, and her baby was stolen. She’d end up with the X-Men in Dallas, where they were killed in front of television cameras only to be resurrected by the goddess Roma and sent off into a new chapter of life in the Australian Outback. Finally, Claremont would reveal the true nature of Maddie in what would serve as the first true X-Men crossover, an event that touched on all the ongoing books and had tie-ins throughout the Marvel Universe.

Patron Pick – Quigley

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 Matt Harris.

Quigley (2003)
Written and directed by William Byron Hillman

When you see a film like Quigley, many questions flow through your mind. “Are we meant to believe 50-year-old Curtis Armstrong is actually 35?” “Was this just a money laundering scheme by the mob?” “Are we laughing with Gary Busey or at him?” If Quigley were to come out today, it would, like the work of Neil Breen, be caught up in the meme machine. Yet, this picture was released in the early 2000s, shot on video, and released straight to the VHS format. At every turn, I was confused by this picture, wondering how aware the people on set were that this was utter garbage. A paycheck is a paycheck, I suppose.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Solo Liminal Horror Part Two

You can purchase Liminal Horror here
You can purchase Jeansen’s Machines here
You can download the Liminal Horror Solo Starter here

Read the previous chapter here

Scene #4 – (Confrontation 1/8)

Random: Deal with a difficulty – Something fails or breaks
Exploration scene: slippery, wet, flood
Skill test: setting-specific
Circumstance: Involves a puzzle, logic
The GM asks you to: Mention the weather or atmospheric conditions

When Cristian gets to the front door, the rain is coming down in heavy sheets. He slams it behind him, feeling water drip onto the floor mat. The only thing that makes sense is to strip the soaked clothes off and change into what he brought. Sopping wet clothes remain piled on the tiled bathroom floor. Waves of exhaustion spill over him, the day’s events catching up. Without looking at his phone, Cristian can’t tell if it’s still daytime or night as the sky is thick with black, rain-bloated clouds. He decides to sleep, hoping that some of this will make more sense when he wakes up. Maybe he’s having a nightmare right now.

PopCult Podcast – Beetlejuice/Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

With Tim Burton’s latest opening in theaters, we decided to take a look back. The first is a classic, his second feature which introduced us to the ghost with the most. The second is YA novel adaptation from 2016 that is heavy on the CG and exposition.

TV Review – Batman: The Caped Crusader

Batman: The Caped Crusader (2024)
Written by Jase Ricci, Bruce Timm, Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker, Adamma Ebo, Adanne Ebo, Hailey Gross, and Marc Bernardin
Directed by Christina Sotta, Matt Peters, and Christopher Berkeley

Does the world need another Batman adaptation? Probably not, but that won’t stop Warner Discovery from pumping it out to make money. Thankfully, this animated series is helmed by the legendary Bruce Timm, the showrunner responsible for Batman: The Animated Series, a program that redefined superhero media on television. He brings that same moodiness and sense of place to this series, which follows Batman in an alternate 1940s/50s noir setting. With writers like Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker onboard, that means you’re in for a show that focuses on Batman’s detective work and surprised me by making it more about the characters than big action set pieces.