PopCult Reviews

Patron Pick – Ernest Goes to Jail

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.

Ernest Goes to Jail (1990)
Written by Charlie Cohen
Directed by John Cherry

Mocking the Ernest films would be easy because they never aspire to be anything more than silly, stupid fun. So, I’m not going to do that. I grew up watching the Ernest movies. I lived in Middle Tennessee, where many of these movies were filmed. The Ernest character had been a commercial mascot for our local Purity Dairy, one of many advertising gigs the classically trained actor picked up early in his career. That’s something I always loved about Jim Varney; he was a working-class actor in the truest sense, not the bullshit contemporary right-wing sense. Varney lived just a few miles from my childhood home, and we saw him once at our local Kroger supermarket. By the time Ernest Goes to Jail came along, Varney was quite established.

Patron Pick – Men in Black II

Men in Black II (2002)
Written by Robert Gordon and Barry Fanaro
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

Around this time, I began to viscerally feel that the popular fare I would see in theaters mainly was trash. I was in college when Men in Black II came out, and I remember going to the theater to see it. I spent August at a friend’s house, and one of their local friends had connections at the local theater. This meant we would get to enter without having to buy tickets. Men in Black II was one of those films. I couldn’t have been happier not to pay to see this thing. When this was requested as a Patron pick, I wondered if I would change my view. Maybe there was something good about it I missed back then. There wasn’t.

Movie Review – Sherlock Jr.

Sherlock Jr. (1924)
Written by Clyde Bruckman, Jean Havez, and Joseph A. Mitchell
Directed by Buster Keaton

There are motion picture cameras. You can film yourself moving rather than just still photography. What do you do with this? That was the situation a handful of people found themselves in following the invention and popularization of movies. It might make sense at first to film people performing plays, operas, or similar things. But that’s a rather flat thing to do. The camera can move and control the audience’s perspective. How can you move that camera to make impossible things seem real? Joseph “Buster” Keaton was one of those people in the early days trying to figure out what this new medium could be capable of.

Movie Review – M

M (1931)
Written by Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou
Directed by Fritz Lang

David Fincher must really love this movie. Zodiac has oddly become a comfort watch for me, mainly because of the procedural nature of the story. Something is compellingThere’s about watching the various investigators – detectives, journalists, puzzle makers – stumbling through crime scenes & strange clues, trying to make sense of things while the city of San Francisco is experiencing an increase in paranoia & tension as a killer walks among them. Having finally watched Fritz Lang’s M, it’s evident that much of what I loved about Zodiac was Fincher’s riff on this German classic.

TV Review – X-Men ’97

X-Men ‘97 Season One (2024)
Written by Beau DeMayo, Charley Feldman, JB Ballard, and Anthony Sellitti
Directed by Jake Castorena, Chase Conley, and Emi-Emmett Yonemura

I was a big fan of the X-Men animated series on Fox in the 1990s. It just so happened that it aired at the same time as my sister’s beloved Saved By the Bell. Thank goodness for VCRs. I ended up with quite a few episodes on tape to rewatch them, which I did many times over. I can’t say I kept up with the show well after the first three seasons. I definitely never would have guessed we’d see a revival of the series and one that doesn’t just try and recreate the original. Instead, this is a slight maturation of the format and the quality of storytelling. It still reads like Saturday morning cartoons, albeit with a more modern serialized structure.

PopCult Podcast – Stress Positions/The Last Stop in Yuma County

Well, not every week is a fun one. Our first film is Brooklyn hipster snark against the backdrop of COVID. The second is a dull formulaic exercise in genre that wastes so much talent.

Comic Book Review – Danger Street

Danger Street (2024)
Reprints Danger Street #1-12
Written by Tom King
Art by Jorge Fornés

Why do I pick up a new Tom King comic if I dislike his work? [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] You might be asking that. The premise for Danger Street is the sort of thing that would naturally hook someone like me. It’s based on First Issue Special, a short-lived D.C. Comics series from the 1970s, in which each issue served as a “pilot” for an ongoing project. The proposed titles spanned a diverse gamut from established but obscure heroes (Dr. Fate, Creeper, and Metamorpho) to reboots of concepts (New Gods, Manhunter, and Starman) to new ideas that used familiar tropes (Atlas, Warlord, Codename: Assassin) to complete weird left turns (The Green Team, Lady Cop, Dingbats of Danger Street, and The Outsiders). King takes all these characters, and attempts to weave a sprawling tale that mixes the epic feel of comics with the grounded takes of more post-modern comics. Like most of King’s work, the concept is far more interesting than the execution.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – CY_Borg Part Four

CY_Borg (Free League Publishing)
Written and designed by Christian Sahlén and Johan Nohr

You can purchase CY_Borg here

You can download the CY_litary De.file_ment solo rules here

Read how Zalec’s adventure began here

Before Zalec heads to The Fickle Fig, she doubles back to Blink the Tinkerer, tossing them the packet of Vurt. Blink grins from ear to ear and gestures that Zalec can take any item she likes. Among the shelves, the gearhead discovers a SmartMine. This object is just like a typical mine – triggered by pressure – but it has cloaking tech, so it blends into any surface you place it on. That could come in handy. The only problem is that Zalec can’t tell what the mine will do when set off.

(Because I double-backed, I’m making myself have to get through one more street before my destination.)

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Notorious: Outsiders Part Three

Notorious: Outsiders (Always Checkers Publishing)
Written and designed by Jason Price
Art by Torben Bokemeye

You can purchase Outsiders here

Read part two of Korris’s trilogy here

Korris Bek’s eyelids fluttered open as the stim moved through his system. He could see the blue skies of Talus overhead and feel the dread bore a pit through his stomach. Days earlier, the Nomad had been scanning what Guild contracts were available to him. Due to his first two missions, Korris has garnered a reputation for being a clumsy rookie who destabilizes the places he visits. The Guild had a reputation for handling things with finesse, but Korris contradicted that. The only open contract he could find that was available to him was issued by the Yonn Cartel. When he closed his eyes, Korris could still feel the ‘lectro-lashes’ of the guards in striking his back, singing his fur, leaving it a permanently blackened tone.

Movie Review – Au Hasard Balthazar

Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
Written and directed by Robert Bresson

Robert Bresson was not a part of the French New Wave. He was in his fifties by the time Godard, Truffaut, and company started their cinematic revolution. Bresson is a reminder that French films were already doing things far differently from their Hollywood counterparts. When you watch a Bresson film, you might feel a distance from yourself and his characters, which can be misinterpreted as “coldness.” To understand Bresson and his work, you need to know of his three primary influences: His Catholic upbringing, his time as a prisoner of war, and his love of art, particularly painting. He was never interested in filmmaking as a way to create great wealth, though he lived comfortably his whole life. Instead, film was the most apt means for the director to express his thoughts about the human condition.