PopCult Reviews

My Favorite Single-Scene Performances

Dave Bautista – Blade Runner 2049 –

You might think Dave Bautista, clearly notable in 2017 for his role as Drax in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, would have a more prominent role in this Blade Runner sequel. Instead, he only appears in one scene, but his performance and character are the crucial hooks that get the story going. Sapper Morton is a Nexus-8 replicant hiding as a protein farmer on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Officer K shows up one day and disrupts the quiet life he’s created. There’s such a heavy sadness to Sapper, who just wanted to live their life in solitude. Their quiet conversation leads to a brief but brutal fight. As a result, this scene showcases the depth of Bautista’s acting ability and physical combat prowess, all while putting Officer K on his path of self-discovery.

Comic Book Reader – Aquaman: Andromeda

Aquaman: Andromeda (2023)
Reprints Aquaman: Andromeda #1-3
Written by Ram V
Art by Christian Ward

DC Comics’s Black Label imprint has produced some of the best work from the company in recent years, and that trend continues with this three-part mini-series, Aquaman: Andromeda. I won’t say this is my favorite Black Label book so far, that belongs to Catwoman: Lonely City, but it is a fantastic science fiction/horror story. My one wrinkle is that it didn’t feel like this was an Aquaman story but rather a story in which Aquaman appears. Instead, this is a clear homage to the work of writers like Michael Crichton, particularly his novel Sphere, but also elements of cosmic horror straight out of H.P. Lovecraft and the psychic manifestations of Solaris. The writing is handled by the insanely prolific Ram V, and the art is handled expertly by Christian Ward.

Movie Review – Bringing Up Baby

Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Written by Dudley Nichols & Hagar Wilde
Directed by Howard Hawks

Where It Happened One Night was a massive box office & critical success for Columbia Pictures; Bringing Up Baby was initially a bomb for RKO Pictures. It was a film explicitly written with Katharine Hepburn in mind and ended up being the culmination of a string of failures in her career at the time. For five years after winning her first Academy Award, the actress struggled to find work that connected with audiences. However, Hepburn would salvage her career three years later with The Philadelphia Story. As for Bringing Up Baby, it would find a new audience in the 1950s and is now revered as one of the great comedies of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Movie Review – It Happened One Night

It Happened One Night (1934)
Written by Robert Riskin
Directed by Frank Capra

No genre in the arts is more subjective than comedy. Initially, comedy was considered performance pieces with a light-hearted tone. So essentially, anything with a happy ending. That has been the case if you look at most theatrical comedies from ancient Greece into our modern era. For example, Dante’s Divine Comedy is named that because it delivers an upbeat ending despite some absolutely horrific Inferno sections. Because these stories often had more relatable moments than the more heightened & sadder tragedies, laughter was commonly heard from the audience. Thus, the connection between comedy & funny became a thing.

March 2023 Posting Schedule

New Movie Reviews
TBD

Film Series
Mar 1st thru 31st – Comedy Masterworks

It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, Harvey, Kind Hearts & Coronets, A Shot in the Dark, The Graduate, The Out-Of-Towners, Young Frankenstein, The Life of Brian, A Fish Called Wanda, Withnail & I, Midnight Run, Waiting for Guffman, The Big Lebowski

Winter 2023 Digest

Features
The State of the Blog 2023
Most Anticipated Films of 2023
[Patron Pick] The Menu – Bekah
[Patron Pick] The Wonder – Matt
[Patron Pick] Eternal Summer – Bekah
[Patron Pick] Hard Eight – Matt
Book Update – Jan/Feb

Book Update – January/February 2023

American War by Omar El-Akkad

Would we ever be told that the United States is in a civil war, or would the government & media simply keep acting like everything was okay? My survey of things back home leads me to believe the current civil war has been raging for years. However, it would never be fought on battlefields like the war in the 1860s. Instead, it is a war akin to the ramp-up of the Troubles in Ireland or the Years of Lead in Italy. When it all explodes, it will be messy and fractious; violence is and will continue to be intra-state, urban vs. suburban vs. rural. Canadian-Egyptian journalist Omar El-Akkad has penned his first novel about a second American war using metafiction, where articles & documents from this parallel reality are used between chapters following a critical figure in the collapse.

Movie Review – Imitation of Life

Imitation of Life (1959)
Written by Eleanore Griffin & Allan Scott
Directed by Douglas Sirk

This was the final film from Douglas Sirk. He didn’t die following its release. He just left the United States and lived in Switzerland for the next twenty-eight years when he passed. He taught briefly in the 1970s at Munich’s University of Film and Television. But this was it. When asked about this stint in America making movies, Sirk said in a 1975 interview: “When I went to the United States, I was making films about American society, and it is true that I never felt at home there, except perhaps when my wife and I lived on a farm in the San Fernando Valley. But I always wanted my characters to be more than ciphers for the failings of their world. And I never had to look too hard to find a part of myself in them.” Sirk and his wife, Hilde, would quickly become tired of the Hollywood scene and return to Europe, but never Germany for too long. The memories were too harsh.

Movie Review – Infinity Pool

Infinity Pool (2023)
Written & Directed by Brandon Cronenberg

Is a fine a proper punishment for people with near-endless disposable cash? There are growing arguments against the death penalty, which are good, but there’s not enough conversation about the fundamental nature of carceral punishment. The presence of a fine allows the wealthy to act above the law, as these fines are often not substantial enough to harm their finances. On the other hand, a working-class or poor person can be left on the verge of destitution if a heavy fine is levied against them. Should there be a more intense punishment system for the wealthy than for the working class & poor? I am not opposed to that idea. Brandon Cronenberg has been thinking about this and his new film Infinity Pool. If it does this well… that’s a different thing altogether.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review – The Portal at Hill House

The Portal at Hill House (Press Pot Games)
Designed by Travis Hill & Linda Farris-Hill

I don’t know if I’ve ever felt scared by a tabletop roleplaying game. Plenty of games fit into the Horror genre label: Vampire the Masquerade, Call of Cthulhu, the smaller horror games, the horror scenarios for other non-horror games, the list goes on & on. I’ve never been genuinely scared by tabletop games. Admittedly, I only really got into tabletop around 2012 and checked out of group play in 2018. I found most horror games to be action-adventure games with horror genre elements. It’s the same way Blade the Vampire Hunter isn’t horror; it’s superhero stories. Horror, for me, is a growing and eventually suffocating sense of dread. There is something you cannot explain, and it is slowly getting closer, and once it does, you have no hope. That’s horror. So, when I came across The Portal at Hill House I wondered how horror would work in solo play. Maybe in this context, it would be scarier?