PopCult Reviews

My Favorite Films of 1983

The Outsiders
Written by Francis Ford Coppola & S. E. Hinton
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

It was partly made out of Coppola’s dire need to pay off accumulated debts and an homage to the rebel films of the director’s youth. Based on the first young adult novel, The Outsiders follows teenager Ponyboy (C. Thomas Howell) as he grows up in a small Oklahoma town where the poor kids are constantly being targeted by the wealthy ones. Pony’s best friend Johnny (Ralph Macchio) accidentally kills one of these preppies out of self-defense, which sends the two boys scrambling into hiding. Through this trial, they are forced to confront the fragility of life and the beauty that each new day brings. Coppola created an emotionally moving and volatile film that captures the chaos of being a young adult. There are some stunningly beautiful images here where the director embraces the intentional artificiality of film in order to strengthen the visuals. The film also introduced us to many white boys who would dominate movies over the next decade, including a pre-dental work, Tom Cruise.

Read my full review here.

Comic Book Review – Justice Society of America: Black Adam and Isis

Black Adam: The Dark Age (2008)
Black Adam: The Dark Age #1-6
Written by Peter J. Tomasi
Art by Doug Mahnke

Justice Society of America: Black Adam and Isis (2009)
Reprints Justice Society of America #23-28
Written by Geoff Johns, Jerry Ordway, and Matthew Sturges
Art by Jerry Ordway, Dale Eagelsham, and Fernando Pasarin

Before Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson desperately tried to carve out a niche in the superhero franchise landscape, Black Adam was just one of the villains in Captain Marvel, aka Shazam’s rogues gallery. Like many villains, he served as the shadow to the hero, a dark version of that main character. When the Shazam franchise was revived in 1995 via Jerry Ordway’s one-shot graphic novel The Power of Shazam (followed by an ongoing series), Black Adam was brought back with more nuance than you would expect with modern comics. He would eventually become a member and then enemy of the Justice Society during Geoff Johns’ first round with the book, a character arc that has permanently redefined how readers view Black Adam. In Johns’s final (at the time) arc on JSA, he brings some closure to Adam and the corner of the world he occupies in the DC Universe.

Movie Review – Eyes of Fire

Eyes of Fire (1983)
Written and directed by Avery Crounse

The American folk horror genre is surprisingly sparse compared to its British counterpart. Starting in the 1970s and continuing through today, British filmmakers continually find new angles to approach the horrors of rural life. With the States being such a vast landmass with plenty of myth & danger sprinkled through its most sparsely populated corners, you would expect more. Robert Eggers’ The Witch is the most prominent American folk horror film, and it becomes hard to name another. Avery Crounse wrote & directed his first feature film by focusing on the expansionist period of American history, following pioneers poorly prepared for what they would find and facing ancient evils tied to the land.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Mork Borg: Solitary Confinement Part 4

Mork Borg: Solitary Defilement (10d+5)
Written & Designed by…? (no specific names on the document)

Read Part One, where I explain the rules/tone of Mork Borg and this solo supplement.

You can get this set of solo rules here.

This playthrough also uses the Mork Borg Core Rules as well as the Feretory supplement.

Instead of using the core book & its included classes, I used a third-party class I’d found on itch.io. Let me introduce you to the Murderous Marionette.

I rolled through some of the Mork Borg core book tables to flesh out my character and his adventure. His name is Träpojke, a puppet made by a disturbed hermit in the mountains of a distant land. The hermit had initially intended to use Träpojke to lure children into his lair, where he would feast on them. However, the spirits of the children who had already been killed by this monster prayed, and these prayers were heard by the Fae who lived in the misty mountains. They woke the wood sprite that slept within the wood Träpojke was made of, and he went on a murderous rampage, bludgeoning his creator to death with the very mallet used in his creation.

Patron Pick – The Social Dilemma

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.

The Social Dilemma (2020)
Written by Davis Coombe, Vickie Curtis, and Jeff Orlowski
Directed by Jeff Orlowski

In every person’s mind lives three Vincent Kartheisers, at least according to this “documentary.” This might be the worst documentary I have ever seen. I was baffled from the first ten minutes and kept sitting there, unable to get over how amateurish and poorly edited the whole thing was. It’s also one of the most redundant films I have ever seen. The picture’s central thesis is explained in the first five or so minutes, and the rest of the runtime is just people saying the thesis in different ways over and over again. Oh yes, and using poorly thought-out metaphors. Two people used magicians as metaphors to explain social media, which was kept in the final cut rather than the director noting that this was unnecessarily repetitive. It’s also a film about a problem in which the people who caused it try to convince you that only they can solve it.

Movie Review – El Norte

El Norte (1983)
Written by Gregory Nava & Anna Thomas
Directed by Gregory Nava

The United States will never seal up their southern border. They will never stop using it as a political football, either. The States rely heavily on cheap, undocumented labor as part of capitalism. Allowing these workers to enter the country (even through illegal means) helps the wealthy squeeze native-born workers out of fair wages in exchange for compromising for lower pay to “be competitive.” This is a problem created by America as they additionally spend taxpayer money through the defense budget to continuously keep Central & South American countries economically & politically destabilized. They get to extract valuable resources from these regions and pay almost nothing, which leads to refugees seeking work elsewhere. The cruelty of this system is not an accident; it’s the catalyst that keeps the engine of capitalism running. It cannot be reformed; it must be abolished. In El Norte, we follow one such pair of economic refugees desperate to find a new life north of their home.

Movie Review – The 4th Man

The 4th Man (1983)
Written by Gerard Soeteman
Directed by Paul Verhoeven

In 1981, the Dutch author Gerard Reve was asked to supply the free book given away during an annual promotion of literacy in The Netherlands. If you bought any Dutch-language book that week, you would get a copy of Reve’s for free. Reve wrote De Vierde Man, a noirish psychological thriller. As a gay man and a Catholic, those themes would often get brought up in his books, this one was a little different as the lead character was bisexual, and the book contained only a brief scene of gay sex. It was apparently too controversial, and the book was dropped in favor of something far more bland & boring. That book has been mostly forgotten, while De Vierde Man was adapted by Paul Verhoeven. The 4th Man would be that director’s final Dutch production until he returned in 2006; in the meantime, he made some of the most memorable 1980s action/farcical films.

PopCult Podcast – Cobweb/Talk To Me

It’s a horror double feature this week on the podcast. In one film, a little boy tries to figure out what secret hiding the walls has his parents acting so strangely. Then, it’s down to Australia where a group of teenagers play around with contacting the dead only to have something horrible find its way to the land of the living.

TV Review – The Venture Brothers Season Two

The Venture Brothers Season Two (Adult Swim)
Written by Jackson Publick & Doc Hammer with Bed Edlund
Directed by Jackson Publick

While the Venture Brothers was primarily focused on parodying children’s shows, from Johnny Quest to G.I. Joe, it could also be strangely poignant. Where season one was about the co-creators Jackson Publick & Doc Hammer finding their footing in this world, season two is about expanding that established universe and adding depth to its characters. The three characters I found to get the most development this season would be Brock Samson, The Monarch/Doctor Girlfriend, and Doctor Orpheus. The show also teases the lore behind Hank & Dean’s origins. Are they clones of Rusty and Brock? Do they have a real mother? Is Dr. Girlfriend their mother? (Of course not). It was all of this with continuous references to the absurdity of genre media & culture.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Fiasco + Mythic GM Emulator Part One

Fiasco 2nd Edition (Bully Pulpit Games)
Designed & Written by Jason Morningstar

Mythic GM Emulator 2nd Edition (Word Mill Games)
Designed & Written by Tana Pigeon

You can purchase Fiasco here
You can purchase Mythic GM Emulator here

As I’ve mentioned, my first foray into tabletop gaming didn’t happen until I was in my late 20s. Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition had just come out, and I was curious. I found pdf scans of the three core books online and tried DMing as my first outing. I never really liked how many rules there were, and I found they got in the way of trying to tell stories. I still wanted to roleplay, but it would have to be with a different game. This is around the time I stumbled across Fiasco on r/rpg. It seemed like the perfect fit, and I had a lot of fun in multiple sessions of this game. I was all-in when the Kickstarter came along in 2019 for a 2nd card-based edition. Due to COVID-19, I never played it with anyone until the previous weekend, from when I wrote this. I brought it over for dinner at a friend’s house in the Netherlands. Fun was had by all. But I was wondering if Fiasco could be done single-player. It would not be the same game, but it could be a robust storytelling tool.