PopCult Reviews

Patron Pick – Eternal Summer

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 Bekah Lindstrom.

Eternal Summer (2006)
Written by Leste Chen
Directed by Hsu Cheng-ping

I know this is likely several people’s favorite movie, if not that, at least something they watched as a teenager in the mid/late-2000s, and it shaped them in some way. However, this soap operatic melodrama is so corny. It’s harmless but not close to how real life and relationships play out. Oozing with broody teen angst and wallowing in the drama, Eternal Summer was certainly not a movie made for someone like me. That’s fine, but if this is a picture you enjoy, you probably won’t enjoy my review because I did not like this movie.

Movie Review – Three Colors: Red

Three Colors: Red (1994)
Written by Krzysztof Kieślowski & Krzysztof Piesiewicz
Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski

In the excellent documentary short Krzysztof Kieślowski: I’m So-So… (available to view on The Criterion Channel), we get a small glimpse into the mind of this complex filmmaker. Kieślowski defines himself in this way: “I am a pessimist. I always imagine the worst. To me, the future is a black hole.” He further clarifies that he sees this as a good trait. I cannot disagree with him, as many of his thoughts in this short film felt like someone putting into perfect words a lot of what I have felt and have felt more intensely since 2020. (A side note, this comment on his visit to the United States made me feel like I have found yet another kindred soul in cinema: “the pursuit of empty talk combined with a very high degree of self-satisfaction.”) How does this kind of director make a movie centered on the theme of fraternity/brotherhood? He does it by focusing on how people communicate in the late 20th century.

Movie Review – Three Colors: White

Three Colors: White (1994)
Written by Krzysztof Kieślowski & Krzysztof Piesiewicz
Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski

There are multiple ways to look at the structure & its relation to the themes of the Three Colors trilogy. One of those is, of course, the three ideals of the French Revolution: liberté, égalité, fraternité. However, Krzysztof Kieślowski is intent on subverting our expectations about these concepts. Another is through the lens of a Europe that was in the process of being partially unified. Blue is about Western Europe, White is about Eastern Europe, and Red is set in the “neutral” nation of Switzerland. There are also mood associations with color. Blue tells the story of a woman who has lost her family (she feels “blue”). Red is about passion & love, which that color regularly symbolizes.

Movie Review – Three Colors: Blue

Three Colors: Blue (1993)
Written by Krzysztof Kieślowski & Krzysztof Piesiewicz
Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski

My first thought when I decided to watch Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors trilogy was why this Polish filmmaker chose to make a series centered around the three political ideals of France: liberty, equality, fraternity. His explanation reveals a lot about how the director approaches his work. Kieślowski said he chose these themes because the funding he received to make the pictures were in francs which bear these three ideals as France’s motto. Kieślowski had no interest in making nationalistic propaganda for France, and instead, these ideas are often presented with a sense of irony in the trilogy, exploring them in ways that feel antithetical but ultimately uphold their meaning. Even stranger is that only one of these movies takes place in France; White is set mainly in Poland, while Red is about people living in Switzerland. While The Three Colors trilogy isn’t attempting to be overtly political, it is set against the backdrop of the most significant change to Europe since World War II, the formal treaties signed to create the European Union, a political body that has reshaped life in the continent.

PopCult Podcast – A Wounded Fawn/In the Mood For Love

Love can be painful in a myriad of ways, whether you’re on a weekend date with a serial killer or feeling yourself growing closer to the spouse of the person your own spouse is having an affair. Damn, it’s complicated.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review – The Wretched

The Wretched (Chris Bissette)
Writing, Design, & Layout – Chris Bissette
Design Consultant – Matt Sanders
Wretched Logo – Liz Gist

Most solo tabletop RPGs are centered around journaling which has been a sticky point for me in the first two reviews. I don’t really journal, my posts here on PopCult Reviews are about as regular as I sit down and write about my thoughts. But I understood that for these games to have their full impact, I needed to be able to document the experience in some way. The solution I thought about goes back to being a kid (again). I filled up reams of spiral-bound notebooks starting at seven and going into college. I eventually trashed these notebooks during a move around 13 years ago (yes, a lot was lost, but I have moved a lot and just was exhausted from lugging so many things around). Within were lots of things: sketches & ideas for video games, I went through a period of drawing comic book covers after discovering books about the Silver Age, and I loved creating a tv show and writing episode descriptions. I was a weird kid; many might argue I am a weird adult. So, I thought that for the games where it worked, I’d like to frame each journal entry as an episode in a tv program. That just happened to work perfectly with The Wretched.

My Favorite Films About Love

Brief Encounter (1945)
Written by Noel Coward
Directed by David Lean

David Lean’s breakout film, Brief Encounter, feels so simple, but within this context, he delivers one of the most complex & realistic love stories ever put to film. Laura is a bored English housewife whose shopping trips to a nearby town provide her an escape from the drudgery of suburban life. She meets the virtuous doctor Alec Harvey through an acquaintance, and an unspoken attraction blooms between the two. Laura starts making her trips weekly to meet up with Alec, sharing a cup of tea and some quiet moments together. They are both married, and this fact looms over their encounters, keeping them from crossing certain lines despite feeling pulled toward each other. There is such a beautiful melancholy to this film, an understanding that attraction doesn’t happen conveniently & there is much about it we can’t explain. The rigid social expectations of the time will prevent Laura & Alec from being together. It may be better that they aren’t. There’s a chance that this is an escape for them that, if they were allowed to consummate it, would lose the magic that the restraint provides. Few dramas today handle the complexity of infidelity & attraction outside of marriage in such a nuanced & thoughtful manner.

Read my full review here.

Comic Book Review – JSA by Geoff Johns Part Five

JSA by Geoff Johns Part 5
Reviewing JSA #46-58 & Hawkman #23-25
Written by Geoff Johns & David Goyer (#46-51)
Art by Sal Velluto, Leonard Kirk, Keith Champagne, Don Kramer, Wade von Grawbadger, and Rags Morales

I just got impatient. It has been 2 ½ years since JSA by Geoff Johns Book Four was published. After I decided to do this series, I read that DC was publishing Book 5 in March, but I simply didn’t want to wait an indeterminate amount of time for the rest of JSA to be reprinted. Watching that atrocious Black Adam movie made me realize I missed the JSA of the 2000s, so I figured out a way to split the remaining issues into three clusters and read through them. One of my biggest takeaways was how the JSA was unlike anything else at DC Comics. The Justice League are big movie blockbusters (or they should be when written correctly), while the JSA is much closer to Claremont’s X-Men, a story about a diverse family of superheroes, they have their own lives, and these personal elements often intersect with the team’s adventures. I even found myself getting teary-eyed a couple times reading these issues because Johns finds a way to make the most obscure DC superheroes extremely human & so their losses hurt, or when we have to say goodbye, it is bittersweet.

Movie Review – Babylon

Babylon (2022)
Written & Directed by Damien Chazelle

Never before in the history of cinema have movies been so technically proficient. Cinematography is always reasonably strong when you come across a studio-produced film. The lighting is pitch-perfect. You cannot beat today’s sound design. All production design elements are spot on, from set dressing to costuming to make-up. The behind-the-scenes people deserve far more credit than they get. They are the laborers who make it feel effortless while putting their total energy into the job. I wish I could say the same about the directors & screenwriters of these big Hollywood pictures, though, but that would be a lie. From Black Adam to Don’t Worry Darling to the seemingly endless Marvel movies to the litany of reboots/sequels/reimaginings, there is a dearth of actual talent steering these movies. I have never been the biggest Damien Chazelle fan, but I enjoyed Whiplash, La La Land, and First Man. They were well-made movies with some strong performances. And then we have Babylon. This is where I get off the Chazelle train.

Movie Review – Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation

Namibia: The Struggle For Liberation (2007)
Written & Directed by Charles Burnett

Charles Burnett has always wanted to make movies but has yet to be afforded the same opportunities as his more establishment-compliant peers in Hollywood. So in the 1990s, the director settled into making films for PBS, particularly documentaries often focused on Black history and individuals, attempting to go deeper than the cursory glance most Americans have of these figures in school. Martin Scorsese even included Burnett as one of the directors of an episode of his The Blues docu-series. Burnett also directed several made for tv movies, including an adaptation of the historical novel Nightjohn for the Disney Channel in 1996. However, one of Burnett’s most constant themes throughout his work has been centered on liberation, Black people pushing against white power structures to find genuine freedom, not wage slavery & oppression with a freedom label slapped on it.