PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Frances Ha

Frances Ha (2012)
Written by Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach
Directed by Noah Baumbach

Frances is an apprentice in a New York dance company waiting for the day she’s given a place on the touring company. She spends her days cavorting through the city with her best friend Sophie, enjoying their youth and lack of serious adult responsibilities. Frances’ life is thrown into disarray when Sophie announces she’ll be moving to Tribeca for her dream apartment with someone else. What follows are a series of vignettes with Frances bouncing from place to place, finding herself losing the progress she’d felt that she had made. Never giving up her awkward and eclectic sensibilities, Frances keeps going, despite finding herself taking so many steps back, she ends up living in the dorms of her former college, pouring drinks for visiting donors.

Movie Review – Weekend

Weekend (2011)
Written & Directed by Andrew Haigh

Russell lives in a small apartment in Nottingham, England keeping to himself and occasionally venturing out into the suburbs to visit his lifelong friend Jamie. One Friday night, on his way home from a house party at Jamie’s, Russell makes a stop at a gay club to see if there are any men he’s interested in hooking up with. He brings Glen home and begins a weekend that will quietly reshape his life and his feelings about his sexuality. Glen is very militant about being gay, studying to be an artist and wanting to make confrontational work about gay experiences, particularly surrounding sex. Russell is fully confident that he is gay but still uncomfortable being gay in a public sphere. His friend Jamie is supportive, but something else is holding Russell back. Over the course of Saturday and Sunday, Russell and Glen talk, argue and have sex all while challenging the other about their ideas. By the end of this weekend, neither man will be the same.

Movie Review – Short Term 12

Short Term 12 (2013)
Written & Directed by Destin Daniel Critton

Short Term 12 is a group home for troubled and emotionally-challenged teenagers. The film focuses on Grace, a young supervisor who is in a relationship with coworker Mason. Grace discovers she’s pregnant early on in the picture and spends the rest of the film contemplating if she is capable of being a good parent. Her day to day life puts her right in front of some of the most challenging issues young people face. The children she sees are victims of predatory adults who have used these kids up and spit them out. Grace also has her past as the child of an abuser hanging over her like a dark cloud. A new resident comes to Short Term 12, Jayden, a girl that puts up a cold front to avoid creating personal connections. In Jayden, Grace begins to see her pains and may spiral out of control on a crusade to save Jayden’s life.

Movie Review – The Grandmaster

The Grandmaster (2013)
Written by Wong Kar-wai, Zou Jingzhi, and Xu Haofeng
Directed by Wong Kar-wai

Ip Man was a Cantonese master martial artist, specializing Wing Chun. He would go on to become the teacher whom Bruce Lee studied under, but this film focuses on his ascension to becoming a grandmaster and his fall from grace during the Japanese occupation. The film begins in the 1930s when Gong Yutian, the grandmaster under whom the southern and northern schools united announces his retirement. He chooses Ip Man as his heir in the south and Ip goes through a series of challenges to prove his worth. Yutian’s daughter Gong Er feels her family has been dishonored by losing this position and sets out to defeat Ip. She loses but a friendship begins that is cut short when the Japanese invade. Ip loses two children to famine and starvation while Gong Yutian faces betrayal at the hands of former students. The rest of the film tries to incorporate way too many events in Ip Man’s life that it ultimately becomes hard even to keep track of what is going on.

Movie Review – Captain Marvel

Captain Marvel (2019)
Written by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Nicole Perlman & Meg LeFauve
Directed by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck

Vers is a confused member of the Kree Empire, mentored by Yon-Rogg and member of the elite Starforce that seeks out the Skrull menace for elimination. A mission to a planet in the Kree’s vast empire ends up with Vers taken by the Skrull, and her memories probed for information on a woman whose identity is unknown to Vers. A series of memories are reactivated, and Vers realizes her destiny awaits her on planet Earth. After a rough crash landing, Vers meets SHIELD agent Nick Fury and the two team up to help the alien visitor learn more about the mystery woman in her past and who Vers truly is.

Movie Review – Destroyer

Destroyer (2018)
Written by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi
Directed by Karyn Kusama

Erin Bell has been worn down by her life as a police detective and the alcohol she downs to self-medicate herself. An envelope arrives at her desk containing an ink-stained bill which suddenly pulls her back into memories that are seventeen years old. Erin and her partner Chris went deep undercover to join a bank robbing gang run by Silas, a sociopath. The envelope is a sign to Erin that Silas is back and she starts to hunt down old associates as a means to find where her enemy is and finish him. To do this, she must cross every line that an officer is expected to uphold and will even kill to find this man that has tormented her mind for decades.

Movie Review – Lost in America

Lost in America (1985)
Written by Albert Brooks and Monica Johnson
Directed by Albert Brooks

David and Linda are comfortably ensconced in their Southern California yuppie lifestyle with plans to buy a new home and a Mercedes-Benz. Everything changes when David fails to get an anticipated promotion at work. In a moment of passion, he quits and convinces Linda to join him in “finding themselves.” The plan is to purchase a Winnebago and travel across the United States to the East Coast where they will buy a quaint little house. Maybe it’ll be a farmhouse in Connecticut or lighthouse in Maine. David calculates they have a safety net in the form a nest egg of savings. So the couple sets off, and it doesn’t take long before they encounter their first major obstacle in making their dreams a reality.

TV Review – True Detective Season 3

True Detective Season 3 (HBO)
Written by Nic Pizzolatto, David Milch, and Graham Gordy
Directed by Jeremy Saulnier, Daniel Sackheim, and Nic Pizzolatto

In 1980 two children go missing in a small Arkansas town. The detectives assigned to the case are Wayne Hays and Roland West. Hays is a stoic and determined investigator having spent his tour of duty in Vietnam as a tracker, wading deep into the jungle often alone. West is a more boisterous personality, a hard drinker, and a man who knows how to navigate the political game that makes up policing. The two men find themselves going down a rabbit hole of dead-end leads as they race against the clock to locate the children. In 1990, after the case is rushed to a close by the district attorney a new lead emerges that brings Hays back from a desk job. These new revelations confirm doubts Hays had about the person ultimately charged. However, they also create a whole new host of questions and confusion about what happened to the kids. Finally, in 2015, Hays is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and the passing of his beloved wife, whom he met back in 1980. Hays’ son has worked with a true crime television series to have his father sit down and be interviewed about the case that has haunted the old man for so many years. As Hays’ mind slips away his hold on the present begins to crumble and soon finds himself pinballing across decades in his brain, finally intent on uncovering the truth.

Movie Review – Mary Poppins Returns

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
Written by David Magee, Rob Marshall, & John DeLuca
Directed by Rob Marshall

It’s The Great Depression in England and Michael Banks is still reeling over the death of his beloved wife. Now he’s a single father with three children, getting support from his sister Jane and their long-suffering housekeeper Ellen. Lawyers from Fidelity Fiduciary arrive one morning to inform the family that due to lax payments on a loan the bank will be seizing the house at the stroke of midnight in five days. That’s when an old friend returns to the lives of the adult Banks children, Mary Poppins. The mysterious nanny from the sky helps the newest generation of Banks kids work through their still lingering grief over their mother and rediscover the magic and joy in life that has been lost during such trying times. Along the way, they are joined by Jack, a lamplighter and former apprentice of Bert the chimneysweep.

Movie Review – Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Written by Mark Boal
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

The September 11th attacks are without question of the most significant moments in the history of our current century and the scope of post-Cold War foreign policy. Osama bin Laden is also one of the most notorious historical figures of our age. Zero Dark Thirty creates a fictional tableau to explain how bin Laden was found and ultimately executed. Of course, because of the safety of the people involved and in an effort not to compromise the intelligence gathering apparatus we will never know the names of anyone directly involved, from the CIA agents to the members of Seal Team Six. Instead, we’re given the story of fictional analyst Maya who follows a winding path trying to discover the whereabouts of a messenger who would deliver directives from Al-Qaeda leadership to cells on the ground. Without realizing what she has stumbled upon she is shocked to discover the journey has led her to a walled compound where bin Laden is hiding out.