PopCult Reviews

Patron Pick – Carry-On

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.

Carry-On (2024)
Written by T.J. Fixman
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

It took just a few minutes of watching Carry-On to realize I was watching a type of copaganda. Instead of shilling for the “boys in blue,” this film attempts to make the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) seem like an essential job that protects Americans and is staffed by cool people who look like action stars. The plot is a yawn-inducing cut & paste of every other terrorist thriller you’ve seen, like tossing 1990s thrillers and the TV series 24 into a blender with some pro-TSA propaganda. I’m not very surprised that a Netflix original is a piece of disposable shlock; that’s sort of the brand at this point.

31 Days of Character Creation #29 – Marvel Multiverse RPG

I don’t typically like most superhero ttrpgs because they focus more on the crunchy minutiae of powers and fail to provide anything regarding the sprawling soap operatic nature of the medium. I’m less interested in the power ratings of one character over another than I am the deep lore of the different people who’ve held the title Green Lantern, the zany Rogues Gallery of Shazam, or the legacies of the Justice Society. When the Marvel Multiverse RPG dropped I didn’t even pick it up and after looking it over yesterday for this character I probably wouldn’t play it unless someone else was running the game and knew it like the back of their hand.

31 Days of Character Creation #28 – Forbidden Lands

This is another Free League game, a company I have come to adore over the last year. Forbidden Lands has arguably been Free League’s biggest success outside of popular IPs they make games for. It’s another fantasy game which may feel like more than well-trod ground in the tabletop space, but they do offer some unique twists to this world that makes it feel quite different from the Tolkien-inspired Dungeons & Dragons fare that has become a sort of default.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Everspark Part Three

Read my previous world building session here
You can purchase Everspark here

Everspark leans heavily into its narrative roleplay over simulationist fare. The first thing you notice is that your character sheet is all words, no numbers. You don’t add any modifiers when you roll Skill checks. Instead, Cezar Capacle presents us with the idea of Leverage and Drawbacks, representing potential risks and rewards. Most of the time, you will roll if the skill falls outside your character’s ABCs (Ancestry, Background, Career).

31 Days of Character Creation #27 – Vampire: The Masquerade 5e

I can remember having a vague awareness of Vampire as a LARP from picking up magazines like Wizard or Inquest as a kid. It seemed like something “weird goth kids.” I don’t think I was completely wrong in that evaluation, but in the following decades I’ve learned a bit more and seems like a fine game. There is a solo ruleset for Vampire, so maybe one day I’ll give it a spin.

PopCult Podcast – Oops, All Nosferatus

A vampire from Transylvania seeks possession of a young woman and manipulates his way into coming to her home.

TV Review – The Prisoner (2009)

The Prisoner (2009)
Written by Bill Gallagher
Directed by Nick Hurran

J.J. Abrams had a stranglehold on U.S. media by the late 2000s. Not just that, but films like The Bourne Identity and the shooting style of director Paul Greengrass clearly became a trend in film and television. These aren’t terrible styles to emulate for a Prisoner remake in that period. If we think about the increased paranoia post-9/11 surrounding the rise of the surveillance state, it seems to mesh quite well with the themes & ideas the original series co-creator & star Patrick McGoohan sought to explore. However, the original Prisoner was a product of the 1960s Cold War era. If you want to tell the story in a modern context, some changes must be made. I don’t think the changes this miniseries made were the right ones, though, and despite having a few clever bits, the overall show was a disappointment.

31 Days of Character Creation #26 – Spire, The City Must Fall

I saw the compelling review of this game on the YouTube Channel Quinn’s Quest and it made me want to play it at some point. If you haven’t seen Quinn’s Quest it is one of the best produced tabletop RPG review channels I’ve ever seen. Watching his videos introduced me to this and The Wildsea and also helped me know a game like Lancer wasn’t for my particular tastes. Spire is a game where the characters are Drow in a vertical city ruled by tyrants. The player characters are intent on bring this power structure down.

Comic Book Review – Superman by Geoff Johns Part Two

Superman: Escape from Bizarro World (2008)
Reprints Action Comics #855-857, Superman #140, DC Comics Presents #71, and The Man of Steel #5
Written by Geoff Johns, Richard Donner, Otto Binder, E. Nelson Bridwell, and John Byrne
Art by Eric Powell, Wayne Boring, Curt Swan, John Byrne, and Dick Giordano

Superman: Secret Origin (2009)
Reprints Superman: Secret Origin #1-6
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Gary Frank

Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes (2008)
Reprints Action Comics #858-863
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Gary Frank

It was Escape from Bizarro World where I started to think Richard Donner wasn’t as involved in Geoff Johns’s Action Comics run as suggested. Something about the story beyond Eric Powell’s art makes me believe The Goon creator had more of a hand plotting the story. It makes sense because his tone to Bizarro’s cube-shaped version of Earth feels very similar to his cult-hit comic book series. The Donner involvement was likely little more than he and Johns talking on the phone over coffee about plots, which generally served as a good marketing tool to bring readers to Action Comics at the time.

31 Days of Character Creation #25 – Savage Worlds

Savage Worlds is a game I’ve known about for over a decade, but just have never sat down to play. In solo tabletop RPG circles, I see it being written about often and decided to go through character creation to get a feel for the system. Savage Worlds doesn’t have an official setting, but many creators have made settings that add elements to character creation.