PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – The Time That Remains

The Time That Remains (2009)
Written and directed by Elia Suleiman

Filmmaker Elia Suleiman tells all his stories through an autobiographical lens. I imagine it can feel overwhelming to tell the story of the Palestinians when you are one of them, especially when multiple experiences are happening at once within the occupied territory. You have the Palestinians of Gaza, the Palestinians of the West Bank, and those who live outside these two yet are still not free. Suleiman presents himself and many of his characters in his work as cold & distant from what is happening. To be in the torment your people have endured for decades just isn’t something that a person can be expected to walk away from with their sanity intact. The camera is another distancing tool and film tropes, too. They allow a person to examine something painful without needing to be directly inside of that pain.

Movie Review – Salt of This Sea

Salt of This Sea (2008)
Written and directed by Annemarie Jacir

One aspect of the Palestinian struggle that I realize I can only intellectually connect with is the connection even those in the diaspora have to the land of Palestine. I can’t say I’ve ever felt a meaningful connection to any place I’ve lived that I couldn’t sever when leaving. I also don’t feel much of a connection to my murky ancestry going back to Ireland, as being a white person in the States means any semblance of cultural roots I have were forfeit for the glorious privilege of strip malls and fast food. So, my understanding of the themes in this film was less emotional than I might have liked, but I get why. This is an experience I just cannot have, but that doesn’t mean I cannot learn something from listening.

Movie Review – Paradise Now

Paradise Now (2005)
Written by Hany Abu-Assad, Bero Beyer, and Pierre Hodgson
Directed by Hany Abu-Assad

It was once said that the suicide bomber was the “poor man’s atomic bomb.” There’s an immediate revulsion many of us in the West have when we see stories or hear about suicide bombings. I think it’s the intimacy of the act. Rarely do you see talking heads on the news react so strongly to stories of drone bombings or Western airstrikes. The suicide bomb seems to be an outgrowth of the act of self-immolation, the act of setting oneself on fire as a form of protest. The argument against suicide bombings has been that they kill many innocent bystanders. I would refer again to the formalized attacks on civilian populations by the West that are not held to this same standard. Paradise Now is the story of a suicide bomber and seeks to understand why a person would feel as if they have no other options to be heard.

PopCult Podcast – 2023 Favorites

After an unexpected series of delays due to illness, we are back to talk about our favorite things and films of 2023.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Blades in the Dark Solo Part Two

Read Part One Here.

Inspector Benjamin de Winter stands in the middle of his basement, looking up at the perfect hole cut into the ceiling, a path directly into what had been, until this evening, his secure vault. He crouches down and lifts the gate on the box at his feet. Matte black objects, each a handful, dart out and skitter across the basement floor.

Comic Book Review – The Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume Two

The Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume Two (2020)
Reprints X-Men #132-141, X-Men Annual #4-5, Uncanny X-Men #142-153, Avengers Annual #10, Marvel Fanfare #1-4, Marvel Treasury Edition #26-27, Marvel Team-Up #100, Bizarre Adventures #27, Phoenix: The Untold Story
Written by Chris Claremont and John Byrne
Art by John Byrne & Dave Cockrum

In my last review, I held back on discussing two characters introduced in the previous couple of issues collected in that omnibus. I’ll talk about them now, as one proves to be a core element to the next phase of Claremont’s run. Emma Frost debuted as part of the Hellfire Club’s first volley to capture Jean Grey and bring her into the fold. I had read these issues years ago and didn’t remember that Emma gets taken off the board fairly quickly. This means when the X-Men finally meet the entire Hellfire Club, Emma is catatonic and not part of the action.

Movie Review – Divine Intervention

Divine Intervention (2002)
Written and directed by Elia Suleiman

Santa Claus runs across a hill near Nazareth in a panic. He’s pursued by a gang of knife-wielding youths. He runs out of steam. They catch up with him. Everything moves so quickly. Santa looks down. The hilt of the knife extends from his chest. He stumbles back. Collapses. That is how Elia Suleiman begins Divine Intervention, another of his vignette comedies. Is this a heavy metaphor about Western culture being driven out by the Palestinian youth, a shocking, dark comedic scene to grab the audience’s attention, or both? My answer is yes.

Movie Review – Chronicle of a Disappearance

Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996)
Written and directed by Elia Suleiman

I don’t have a large platform, though it has grown significantly in the last year. I don’t assume that many eyes see what I do here. However, I feel an obligation to do something regarding the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, something that began in 1948. Because I focus on media, I thought a film series spotlighting Palestinian cinema might do some good. At minimum, it would elevate some pieces of art that deserve to be seen. In early 2020, when the Trump administration assassinated Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani, I saw a rise in the old Islamophobia I remembered seeing in my college days. In response, I did a series spotlighting Iranian films. I’m glad I did. I think Iranian filmmakers have been doing incredible work for a long time. With the vitriol and rancor towards Palestinians eclipsing anything I saw in 2020, I decided to do this.

Movie Review – The 400 Blows

The 400 Blows (1959)
Written by François Truffaut and Marcel Moussy
Directed by François Truffaut

You’ll hear this annoying thing from hack directors who get justifiably reamed in the reviews for lousy work. They’ll say that people who are critics are just incapable of making their own art. It’s silly to say that because it tries to say that a thoughtful critique of a piece of art is invalid unless it praises that piece of art. François Truffaut loved movies since he was a child; as a young adult, he secured a job at Cahiers du Cinéma, becoming known as one of their most brutal writers. He earned the nickname “The Gravedigger of Cinema” and was the only Cahiers writer not invited to the 1958 Cannes Film Festival. After seeing Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, Truffaut doubled down on his dreams of making his own feature film. This led to The 400 Blows (alongside Goddard’s Breathless) and the birth of the French New Wave. It seems like critics can make great art, too.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Blades in the Dark Solo Part One

Blades in the Dark (Evil Hat Productions)
Designed and written by John Harper

Purchase Blades here
Purchase Alone in the Dark here

Read Part Two Here

Blades in the Dark was a huge game. I backed it on Kickstarter. But that was when I “fell out of love” with the hobby because of some very toxic personalities I had encountered. There was so much social media drama at the time that soured what made these games fun for me. Blades is also a very dense text at the start. There are no accusations of these being rules-lite, though once you get a flow of how it plays, it feels straightforward. I remember reading one of the Kickstarter drafts and not having the bandwidth to parse it all. Since then, Blades has helped birth a whole new subgenre of game, Forged in the Dark. When I started playing solo games, I noticed how many FiTD titles there were and decided I should probably see if Blades could be played solo. And it could.