PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – The Super Mario Bros. Movie

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
Written by Matthew Fogel
Directed by Aaron Horvath & Michael Jelenic

Despite numerous adaptations to film & television, live-action & animated, Mario remains one of the most nebulous pop culture characters regarding his narrative arc. Most cartoon shows begin in media res; Mario is already the hero and, accompanied by his friends Luigi, Toad, and Peach, fights the good fight against Bowser & his Koopa Troopas. The hybrid Super Mario Bros. Super Show television series exists as this strange liminal object, with the framing device of Captain Lou Albano & Danny Wells, as Mario & Luigi, respectively, introducing audiences to cartoon stories about them. Yet, there is never an apparent effort made to establish the timeline of events. The 1993 live-action movie starring Bob Hoskins & John Leguizamo veers off into its own unique & bizarre direction, positing a parallel dinosaur-dominated timeline. As much presence as Mario has in American & Japanese culture since the 1980s, no one seems very concerned about the story behind the plumber. In this way, The Super Mario Bros. Movie exists as the first origin story that adheres closely to the designs & relationship dynamics of the video games.

Movie Review – Alice in the Cities

Alice in the Cities (1974)
Written & Directed by Wim Wenders

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. – “The Stolen Child,” W.B. Yeats

The world is Hell, and more so for children than anyone else. They are ultimately the most powerless of the humans on the planet, seen as property by their parents, animals to be tamed by systems of education, and future labor to be squeezed dry by our institutions. I was an elementary school teacher from 2010 to 2020 and saw the spectrum of joy & pain that children are forced to endure. I had homeless students, transient & ping-ponging between schools for years, raised by severely drug-addicted guardians, and subject to physical/sexual abuse. Wim Wenders, one of the great directors of late 20th century German cinema, thought a lot about what was heaped on the shoulders of children and, after adapting The Scarlet Letter years earlier, found he sympathized far more with Pearl, Hester Prynne’s daughter than he did any of the adults in the story. So he decided to cast the young actress who played Pearl in this next film, where he focuses on her experience.

Movie Review – The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972)
Written & Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

We only see one room of Petra Von Kant’s home for the entirety of this film, creating a sense that we’re in a realm of metaphor rather than concrete reality. This is a crypt, and we watch her rise from her grave at the start, only to return to it. The all-female cast understands what Fassbinder is doing; this is a camp film, not as extreme with filth as John Waters and not as on the nose as what camp became in the 1960s. This is camp in the traditional queer definition, the actresses summoning up the energy of women like Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, and their peers. It’s a lot of talking, but you might learn something if you pay attention.

Movie Review – Aguirre, The Wrath of God

Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972)
Written & Directed by Werner Herzog

Germany was a very different country after World War II than before. It was sundered in two, the city of Berlin divided in half. German cinema, which had been quite a robust center of challenging artistic work before the rise of the Nazis, was gone and didn’t recover in the wake of the collapse. Meanwhile, there was the French New Wave, Italian neorealism, and Britain’s Angry Young Man subgenre of pictures. In 1962, a group of German filmmakers released a manifesto declaring Germany’s old cinema dead and the birth of something new. In 1965, the East German government set up a fund to provide money to filmmakers, but that work often failed to challenge the institutions that young Germans saw as responsible for the events of the war. It was in the early 1970s that the most vital voices in the country came forward. You likely know some of their names: Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Wim Wenders. Others you probably do not. For April, I’ll be looking at some of the essential movies in this movement where the film served as a way to comment on a society existing in shock.

PopCult Podcast – Welcome to the Dollhouse/La Haine

We’re going back to 1995 for April to watch & re-watch some fantastic films. Our first picture is a darkly comic examination of life in the East Coast suburbs. Our second film is a French crime-drama that moves at a breakneck speed and is a perfect piece of cinema.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review – Ironsworn Part Two

Ironsworn (Tomkin Press) Part Two
Designed & Written by Sean Tomkins
You can download Ironsworn for FREE here.

Read Part One for a brief overview of the rules for Ironsworn.

To play Ironsworn, I used a remarkable and free online play resource called Iron Journal. First, I chose the Truths for my version of the Ironlands default setting. These are as follows in a more summarized version than the game presents them:

The Old World: There was a pandemic that ravaged our homelands, and people fled in droves; many were tossed overboard when they were found to be sick, and those who survived have carved out a home in this new, rough land.

Iron: The weather here is brutal, and the sun rarely breaks through the clouds. Those who make it here that can survive the long winters are said to be made of iron.

Comic Book Review – Monkey Meat

Monkey Meat (2022)
Reprints Monkey Meat #1-5
Written & Illustrated by Junji Ba

To quote Tim & Eric’s Awesome Show, Great Job!, “All the food is poison.” One thing I’ve learned while living in The Netherlands is that society doesn’t have to have a constant flood of food recalls as they are in the United States. You ensure that by being very strict about what is and isn’t allowed for consumption and then enforcing those regulations. The United States essentially decided to hand regulatory power for meat packing plants to the companies themselves. Between the nightmarish working conditions that have a severe psychological impact on the workers, the cruel treatment of animals, to the chemicals & toxins allowed into America’s meat, it’s no wonder public health is dismal. Sinclair Lewis’s The Jungle had an impact in its time, but it’s clear that effect has faded. Now, there seems to be a story every few days about children (often migrants) being found working in meat packing plants doing work that has driven adults to suicide and death.

April 2023 Posting Schedule

In November 2022, I was pleasantly surprised to see a massive spike in traffic on PopCult due to my review of Skinamarink, the cult horror film that had stirred up quite a buzz at the time. My total number of views that month was over 6,800, a site record. That was pretty cool and while the number dipped the following months it continued to stay in that range, dipping to 4,200 in February. Then March happened and wow!

Movie Review – The Big Lebowksi

The Big Lebowski (1998)
Written by Joel & Ethan Coen
Directed by Ethan Coen

Why is The Big Lebowski still so damn funny? Rewatching it for this series; I think the 6th time I saw the movie, I was still laughing as hard as I did the first time. The comedy comes out of a common trope in the genre, the juxtaposition of opposing concepts. You can bring up tons of humorous situations by placing two things beside each other that don’t contradict so much as they don’t belong together at all. In the instance of The Big Lebowski, this is taking a Raymond Chandler noir novel and making the protagonist an old stoner hippie rather than a square-jawed private investigator. It’s a concept that, on paper, doesn’t pop as spectacularly; however, because of the sharpness of the Coens’ writing and the performances they get from their actors, the film is a transcendent comedy experience.

Movie Review – Waiting for Guffman

Waiting for Guffman (1999)
Written by Christopher Guest & Eugene Levy
Directed by Christopher Guest

Musical theater is a mixed bag. I enjoy plays that Stephen Sondheim contributed to; he was a thoughtful songwriter whose lyrics show a maturity not often seen in American entertainment. However, we also have shlock like Spongebob the Musical or Back the Future the Musical, shows that should be held in little amphitheaters off the side at amusement parks that you only go to in search of some shade and a break from walking around. And then you have something like Hamilton, a piece of garbage in its own class. Yes, I know some of you really love this one, but between the color-swapping of historical slave owners and Lin Manuel Miranda’s simping for the elites at the cost of his fellow Puerto Ricans, let’s just say it’s not my thing. Nevertheless, making fun of musical theater is a rich vein to tap, and Christopher Guest & company pulled that off beautifully in Waiting for Guffman.