PopCult Reviews

Comic Book Review – Villains United

Villains United
Reprints Villains United #1-6, Special
Written by Gail Simone
Art by Dale Eaglesham and Val Semekis

The march towards Infinite Crisis continues with more fallout from the events of Identity Crisis. Once it was revealed that a contingent of Justice League members was actively using their powers to mindwipe villains, this became a rallying point for those baddies seeking to amass power. The Society was formed, led by Lex Luthor, Talia al Ghul, The Calculator, Deathstroke, Doctor Psycho, and Black Adam. The group is splitting up to hit all corners of the planet in a recruitment drive. If you don’t submit to their campaign to pull off a massive attack on the superheroes, then you’re left for dead as a message to any future dissenters. Writer Gail Simone cleverly makes these mini-series not about the top tier villains in power, but in a small group who aren’t willing to go along with the ultimatum.

Movie Review – Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Written by Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, and John-Henry Butterworth
Directed by Doug Liman

Groundhog Day didn’t invent the “living the same day over and over” trope, but it sure made the thing popular and part of the larger cultural conversation. Edge of Tomorrow takes this idea and overlays it onto a science fiction action film playing the concept for thrills over laughs, though it does have moments of humor. Tom Cruise stars as Major William Cage who is involved in the global effort to push back an alien invasion. Cage is part of media relations and uses his position to avoid combat on the front until the general overseeing the upcoming assault has him shipped off to fight alongside a unit. Cage gets dropped into the D-Day style assault on the northern French coast and is blasted with an unknown energy source before dying. He immediately wakes up 24 hours earlier and lives through the same day, again and again, eventually meeting war hero Rita Vrataski, who knows Cage’s condition all too well.

Movie Review – Son of Saul

Son of Saul (2015)
Written & Directed by László Nemes

In the midst of the obscene and the profane does it make sense to eke out some small piece of the sacred? What value do rituals and beliefs have when confronted when the horrific abomination of humanity’s darkest hour? Do we need to shield these artifacts of faith, these dying flames from decimation? First-time feature director László Nemes chooses to film the story with an impressionistic style, almost every single scene so tightly focused on Saul, a Hungarian Jew imprisoned at Auschwitz. The background is nearly abstracted in nearly every scene, our protagonist being shoved along through a seemingly never-ending series of atrocities against humanity. Saul reaches out clinging to a practically useless ritual as a means to disconnect from what is happening around and to him.

Movie Review – Brooklyn

Brooklyn (2015)
Written by Nick Hornby
Directed by John Crowley

The immigrant experience is familiar fodder for filmmakers, and New York City is often the setting for many period pieces about new arrivals to our shores. Brooklyn is the story of Eilish, an Irish woman who crosses the Atlantic to start a new life in America. She’s set up in a boarding house with a job at a large department store by her Catholic priest sponsor. Eilish struggles with homesickness but eventually works past it, helped by a burgeoning relationship with Tony, a young Italian man. Tragedy strikes back home in Ireland, and Eilish is forced to return with plans to go back to NYC. However, she finds new horizons available to her in Ireland that may change her plans.

Movie Review – Dark Phoenix

Dark Phoenix (2019)
Written & Directed by Simon Kinberg

If a superhero is released in theaters without the promise of a dozen sequels, does it matter if we see it?
This is a legitimate question to ask ourselves in an age of perpetually existing cinematic universes. The X-Men franchise has always been an odd duck in the post-MCU landscape, with its muddled timelines and no strong throughline existing between films. Days of Future Past (2014) was the most successful in terms of box office crossing the $700 million line, but I don’t ever see too many people talk about how much they enjoyed that film. I found it to be okay, a competently made follow up to the much better First Class. The most successful movies in Fox’s superhero stable have the tangentially connected near-spoofs of Deadpool and Deadpool 2, with the bleak dystopian Logan not far behind. The X-Men team itself has suffered not just from a lack of continuity but in a stable roster of characters for audiences to become emotionally invested in. Nothing that Dark Phoenix does helps remedy these problems and leaves a sour taste in the mouth upon its conclusion.

Movie Review – Phoenix

Phoenix (2014)
Written Christian Petzold & Harun Farocki
Directed by Christian Petzold

The post-World War II period in Germany has proven to, when used as a setting, provide some of the most atmospheric and rich stories in cinema. You have this sliver of time after the defeat of the Nazis and before the nation was cleaved in half by the Cold War where society was attempting to redefine its identity in the wake of cultural horrors. There were survivors of the Holocaust re-entering Berlin, some with a desire to move past what that had experienced and others never forgetting which of their neighbors betrayed their trust. This is the landscape of mature, nuanced thrillers where each interaction can be dealt with a delicate touch, and shocking reveals are as gentle as a feather yet devastate people to their cores.

Comic Book Review – The Flash by Mark Waid Volume 6

The Flash by Mark Waid Volume 6
Reprints The Flash #119 – 129, The Flash/Green Lantern: Faster Friends #1-2, The Flash Plus Nightwing, Showcase ‘96 #12, and DC Universe: Holiday Bash
Written by Mark Waid (with Brian Augustyn and Ron Marz)
Art by Paul Ryan, Eduardo Barreto, and Bart Sears

Wally West, as most readers know him today, was mostly formed by Mark Waid. As I’ve read through the Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s New Teen Titans run, I’ve seen that pre-Crisis Wally West was a different animal, more ambivalent with a greater conservative leaning, written that way to contrast him off some of his liberal teammates. Recently, West became the character at the center of Tom King’s Heroes in Crisis, an event comic that took many liberties with his personality and irked some fans. I am still holding my judgments until I can sit down and give the book a good re-read. In online conversations, there have been lots of talk about how King was not true to whom Wally is, talking about him as if he is a historical figure or some concretely established part of the DC canon.

TV Review – Black Mirror Season 5

Black Mirror Season 5 (Netflix)
Created by Charlie Brooker

Striking Vipers
Written by Charlie Brooker
Directed by Owen Harris

We live in an era where the boundaries between sexuality and gender are blurring more and more, allowing people to explore their identities in ways never before possible. Technology also offers opportunities to rewrite and redesign yourself via the anonymity of the internet. Once users could change their identities through text-based interfaces but now the digital mapping of faces you can apply overlays over your visage that transform you into a different gender, a different species, or an entire fantastical being. Where Black Mirror will typically travel to the dark side of how humans interact with technology, Striking Vipers is a spiritual successor to San Junipero, one of the more hopeful entries into the series.

The X-Men Films: Best to Worst

Today marks the end of an era. Nineteen years ago on July 14th, 2000 the first X-Men film was released by 20th Century Fox. This was only the second Marvel property to be adapted to movie screens after 1998’s Blade, and it would go on to inspire a whole industry of comic book films that are still being made today. Since that first movie, Fox has continually come back to the well putting out more installments in the X-Men franchise as well as better and more successful spin-offs with the characters of Wolverine and Deadpool. With Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox, it’s become inevitable that these mutant characters are going to be reintroduced as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. What that means is that today’s release of Dark Phoenix will be the last Fox X-Men movie. I decided to present my list of best to worst X-Men movies to mark this moment. I will not include the Wolverine or Deadpool pictures because I want to focus solely on the X-Men as a team.

Movie Review – Frank

Frank (2014)
Written by Jon Ronson & Peter Straughan
Directed by Lenny Abrahamson

When given an actor like Michael Fassbender, a man with a handsome leading actor face and square jaw, the last thing you would think to do is put him under a paper mache head for ¾ of your movie. In doing this though the filmmakers give Fassbender some freedoms he might not be afforded in more traditional roles in films that call on him to be a smoldering lover or a dashing hero. The character of Frank is a cipher, created by comedian and musician Chris Sievey. Sievey used Frank as a way to express the strangeness and absurdity he might have felt too nervous about showcasing with his face revealed. The film Frank, very different from the real world Frank, is a mentally ill man who is unable to see himself as a valuable person and hides in this mask, which he sees as the ideal form of a face.