PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Wiener-Dog

Wiener-Dog (2016)
Written & Directed by Todd Solondz

I can’t say I’ve ever enjoyed a Todd Solondz film, but I have been continually fascinated by them. He is such a profoundly misanthropic filmmaker with an aesthetic that clashes with the darkness of his material. Wiener-Dog is his most recent film, and it won’t toss anything new at familiar audiences. The film hits on the same gripes Solondz has always ranted about: the soullessness of the middle class, the lack of art in cinema, the inevitability of our deaths. All of this is told in a bright, warm pastel palette complete with a soundtrack that creates a dissonance with the themes of the picture.

Movie Review – Climax

Climax (2019)
Written & Directed by Gaspar Noe

The bliss of Heaven is matched by the torment of Hell. This is the central theme of Gaspar Noe’s latest film, a psychedelic odyssey into madness, performed by mostly non-acting professional dancers. They have holed up in an abandoned boarding school during a snowstorm where they are celebrating their planned trip to the United States for a competition. The night’s revelry begins with spontaneous dancing and the consumption of some delicious sangria. After everyone has drunk of the celebratory punch, they realize it’s been spiked with LSD, and the nightmare begins. As is Noe’s style, the film is structured in surprising ways with often overly showy cinematography.

Movie Review – James White

James White (2014)
Written & Directed by Josh Mond

The first thing you notice is the extreme close up of the young man’s face, the titular James White. Next, you see the abstracted background, unfocused to the point of becoming an impressionistic blur. The message is clear: we’re going to spend some time getting uncomfortably close to James, in his head, seeing the world from his perspective, as ugly as that might get. Josh Mond has given us a challenging and often unsympathetic figure in James White, a version of himself written as part of the director’s exploration of his own mother’s death from cancer three years prior.

Comic Book Review – New Teen Titans Volume 10

New Teen Titans Volume 10
Reprints New Teen Titans v2 #10-15, Annual v2 #1
Written by Marv Wolfman
Art by Eduardo Barreto, Stan Woch, Romeo Tanghal, and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

This volume of the New Teen Titans is a bit of a mess. Marv Wolfman is entirely at the helm of the book’s direction and doesn’t seem to know exactly what kind of stories he wants to tell. The Titans feel directionless with multiple issues that have no weight on the characters or progressing any arcs. These issues are so far removed from iconography and characters most associated with the Titans that it feels like an entirely different comic at times. Other than the connections to the Crisis event, these are stories existing in their inconsequential pocket of the DC Universe.

Movie Review – Booksmart

Booksmart (2019)
Written by Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, and Katie Silberman
Directed by Olivia Wilde

Superbad came out twelve years ago. At the time, I knew this was a high school comedy for a generation younger than myself. With Booksmart we’re presented with a high school comedy about a generation graduating nineteen years after my own, so I have begun to feel the growing chasm in my own experiences and the intended audience of this picture. Booksmart is a movie written with my students of years prior in mind, yet it is inspired by so many films that have come before.

TV Review – Barry Season 2

Barry Season 2 (HBO)
Written by Alec Berg, Bill Hader, Taofik Kolade, Jason Kim, Duffy Boudreau, Emily Heller, and Liz Sarnoff
Directed by Hiro Murai, Minkie Spiro, Liza Johnson, Bill Hader, and Alec Berg

The tagline for Barry is “a hitman tries to make it as an actor,” a premise which sounds like the worst Hollywood pitch of the post-Goodfellas 1990s. Think about pictures like My Blue Heaven or Analyze This, where mob stereotypes are played for laughs. It’s the theme of Barry that keeps us coming back every week, “Can people who have done bad things still be good people?”. Co-creator and star Bill Hader, known for his comedic chops honed on Saturday Night Live, manages to find the perfect middle ground where he can have moments to play things for laughs but then flip things around in an instant to discover the most heart-rending moments of pathos. Barry is a funny tragedy.

Movie Review – Boyhood

Boyhood (2014)
Written & Directed by Richard Linklater

Seeing the connectivity and influences that have made your life can be a very daunting task. There are profound moments that stand out, but they alone are not what shaped you into the person that exists today. Filmmaker Richard Linklater decided to attempt to tell the story of one person over the course of the actor’s actually childhood and adolescence, everyone in the cast contributing real-life experiences in a semi-improvised movie. The result is Boyhood, an ambitious piece of cinema but one that doesn’t entirely propel itself into a pantheon of greatest films, in my opinion.

TV Review – Game of Thrones Season 8

Game of Thrones Season 8 (HBO)
Written by Dave Hill, Bryan Cogman, David Benioff & D.B. Weiss
Directed by David Nutter, Miguel Sapochnik, David Benioff & D.B. Weiss

Winter has come, and all the players are aligned for the final battle for Westeros. Daenerys Targaryen has arrived with dragons bringing her armies from the East. An alliance has been formed between the exiled monarch and the people of the North. The Wall has been breached and the Night King marches south to destroy anything in his path. Meanwhile, Queen Cersei Lannister has brokered deals with the Iron Islands and the Golden Company of Essos to serve as her protection against the inevitable battle with Targaryen. Jon Snow learns of his true parentage and how this could affect his relationship with the newly arrived leader. The table is set for a new age to begin in Westeros, but will it be any better than what has come before?

Movie Review – April and the Extraordinary World

April and the Extraordinary World (2013)
Written by Franck Ekinci & Benjamin Legrand
Directed by Christian Desmares & Franck Ekinci

April Franklin is a woman living in a world where history took a markedly different turn than our own. During the reign of Napoleon III, a scientist is charged with creating animal-soldier hybrids. He creates two hyperintelligent beings that escape and soon after the world’s greatest scientists and engineers begin disappearing. This impediment to progress leads to a mid-20th century where energy is still based primarily in coal and steam power. April’s parents and grandfather vanished years ago during a government crackdown, and she has been fending for herself alongside her genetically altered cat friend Darwin. The two uncover a plot to destroy humanity and the secret solution for the ultimate formula, a serum that would make all life impervious to harm.

Movie Review – A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2013)
Written & Directed by Ana Lily Amirpour

In the decaying Iranian spot of Bad City, The Girl wanders through the night, a vampire clad in hijab and chador, feasting on the not so innocent denizens. Arash is a young man struggling to make ends meet, taking care of his heroin-addicted father who owes money to local drug dealer Saeed. Arash and The Girl’s paths meander around each other for a while before their fateful meeting. A connection is felt between them, and she withdraws, scared to feel connected to a human. No matter how far she runs, invisible forces are intent on bringing them together, weaving a story of comedy and tragedy.