PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989)
Written by Pedro Almodóvar and Yuyi Beringola
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar

As he does in almost all his work, Pedro Almodovar delivered yet another provocative, gorgeous story centered on a woman and complications in her life. It would be easy to denounce this movie as “problematic” if you view art as a surface-level thing without facets and complexity. Almodovar is an exceptionally talented artist who knows this is a film about a profoundly gross relationship. The audience feeling unease throughout is intentional, and the ending is such a perfect note to go out on. The face of our lead shows a sudden realization through the haze of the intense bubble she’s been trapped inside. This is wrong, this is something very dark & twisted she’s trapped within.

Movie Review – The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover (1989)
Written and directed by Peter Greenaway

From its abrasive opening moments, you know you are in for a unique experience. English gangster Albert Spica (Michael Gambon) has his lackeys toss someone who has failed him out onto the streets as stray dogs wander over. The scene is flanked by a truck full of fresh seafood on one side and a truck of meat on the other. Spica proceeds to begin what will be an endless monologue, yammering in his Cockney dialect as if he is enchanted by hearing his own voice. He says nothing of import. He proceeds to strip & batter the poor man on the ground and then smear dog shit over his body, leaving him there to rot. Spica and his entourage move on to the restaurant he’s purchased, where the criminal believes he can hold court.

TV Review – The End of Evangelion

The End of Evangelion (1997)
Written by Hideaki Anno
Directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki and Hideaki Anno

Apparently, a large enough contingent of viewers were dissatisfied with the ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion, and creator Hideaki Anno produced this follow-up feature that exists parallel to that conclusion. From what I read, it sounded like Anno went back and forth between his original concept and some altered ideas. It is a very jarring experience for the central narrative to suddenly collapse into an internal dialogue between Shinji and mental projections of the important people in life. There’s also a meta-commentary on anime cliches that pops up and a weirdly upbeat ending. Several questions were left unanswered, so it was decided to go back and add more to the finale.

PopCult Podcast – I Saw the TV Glow/Exhuma

Two recent horror releases make up today’s episode. One is a dark fantasy about queerness in the suburbs of 1990. The second is Korean folk horror about stopping a vengeful ghost.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Sundered Isles Part Three

You can purchase Sundered Isles here.
You can purchase Starforged here.
You can purchase Sea of Sands here.

Read our previous chapter where Jadyn began her journey.

Oracle: Pillaged Enclosure

Jadyn wakes up to find her hand and arms bound behind her. She’s sitting on the hard ground of a courtyard in the center of the Haqiq monastery, which sits on the top of the Great Burrow, looking out over all of Jahar and the ocean beyond. However, her view at this moment is just of monks scattered through the courtyard, preparing weapons and barricading the doors of their home. The other two members of the Erasmus crew are similarly tied up but unconscious.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Mothership 1e Part Two

You can purchase the Mothership 1e Core Set here.

You can purchase Dead Planet here.

You can read the rules for solo and wardenless play in Mothership 1e here.

In our first part, I went over the basics of the system and chose Android as my class while also fleshing out the world’s backstory.

Each class in Mothership has different modifications in the character creation process. As an Android, I got to add an additional 20 to my Intellect, making it a total of 52. My Strength, Speed, and Combat scores are all in the low to mid-30s, so it may sound like Intellect will dominate. Remember, this is a d100 system, so while 52 is much larger, it doesn’t astronomically improve my chances of success. I also had to subtract 10 from another Stat of my choice, which I chose Combat for. Mothership is a game where Combat is typically deadly anyway, especially against the entities you’ll face, and I don’t see Jerome as someone programmed with combat in mind, more compliance to corporate policy.

Movie Review – Steel Magnolias

Steel Magnolias (1989)
Written by Robert Harling
Directed by Herbert Ross

The stage play-to-screen adaptation is fascinating to me. Works produced initially in the theater are restricted by money & the physical space. The original stage production of Steel Magnolias took place entirely in Truvy’s beauty salon, but we expect more movement and locations for a film. I’ve never seen a production of the play, but I felt I could still see the seams where new things were sewn on, and that wasn’t bad. It highlights how much more narratively developed the women are in this story than the male characters who don’t appear in the play. The film is much stronger when the story focuses on the relationships between the women. It falters a lot when it shifts focus to their interactions with the men.

July Film Series Poll

I have a poll on our Patreon that is one of the rare ones open to the public. I’ll include voting You can choose which film series will make up the last two weeks of July. Your choices are:

Fantasy Worlds on Film – 1980s sword & sorcery style tales
The Last Unicorn, Dragonslayer, Conan the Barbarian, The Neverending Story, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Contemporary Filmmaking Women – movies made by female filmmakers working today
The Chambermaid, Happy as Lazzaro, Pariah, The Second Mother, Capernaum

French Film Noir – The French take on the very American genre of Noir
Bob le flambeur, Rififi, Shoot the Piano Player, Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge

Movie Review – Mystery Train

Mystery Train (1989)
Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch

Like Soderbergh, van Sant, and Linklater, Jim Jarmusch is a director who rose to prominence during this period, and I’m not sure how I feel about him. There are Jarmusch films I love (Paterson, Broken Flowers, Ghost Dog), while others I’m a bit more confounded by. I still need to watch his first two films as I hear tremendous things. Like several of his other pictures, Mystery Train is actually a series of short films with wraparound scenes that connect them. It seems to be a structure he’s very comfortable working in, using vignettes about different characters in the same place or moments from the same character’s life. His movies have such a relaxed feeling about them, a mishmash of Laurel & Hardy and David Lynch at times, and are old-fashioned but feel incredibly fresh.

Movie Review – Drugstore Cowboy

Drugstore Cowboy (1989)
Written by Daniel Yost and Gus van Sant
Directed by Gus van Sant

Gus van Sant joins a growing list of directors who came to the forefront in the late 80s/early 90s, and I’m not sure how I feel about them. Previously, I’d discussed this about Steven Soderbergh and sex, lies, and videotape. On the most recent episode of the podcast, we reviewed Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, and I remarked how I’m very up and down with his body of work. For Van Sant, My Own Private Idaho will forever be an impossible film to beat. It is a full-fledged American cinematic masterpiece, so I was very interested in stepping back into the film just before and seeing what he had made. A considerable section of his fanbase declares this as their favorite of his movies.