Pop Shots News

Exorcist: Believer Review

Behold the Interfaith Open-Mike Exorcism Jam Did you ever put together one of those furniture kits and get stuck because you were missing the final parts? Exorcist: Believer starts relatively strong, but they had to kind of glue that last part together. Leslie Odom plays Victor Fielding, a man who becomes a single father through tragedy, losing his wife in the massive earthquake in Haiti. Doctors can’t save his very pregnant wife, but they can protect the baby. Previously, a woman in a market offered not a spooky curse but a blessing to the young mother-to-be. Years later, Odom struggles to co...

Nocebo Review: Issue-Driven Thriller is Good Medicine

Nocebo: A Stunning Cross-Cultural Horror FilmNocebo is a bad result from taking a harmless substance. Negative expectations or psychological distress can cause the Nocecbo effect. Nocebo (2022) is also an exceptional small-cast Irish-Filipino co-production that brings folk horror to an Irish suburb and calmly pulls threads from the social fabric weaved by economic exploitation. Christine, a children’s fashion designer and entrepreneur, puts on her bright red heels with an incantation: “Lucky Shoes, Lucky Shoes, Make me win and never lose.” She is fated to meet with a different kind of magic fr...

Do Ninja Movies Predict the AI Future of Film?

Actors worry about AI — with good reasonFilm actors are concerned that studios will use AI to easily lift performances from one work and place them in another without compensation. But it already happened decades ago in the analog world. Recycling Actors’ Work in the Pre-AI EraActors go where the work is, and for some Hollywood actors in the 1950s and 60s, it meant leaving the U.S. and relocating to Europe, particularly Italy. The athletic bit player Richard Harrison soon found himself starring in muscleman roles, westerns, and spy thrillers. When roles in Italy started to dry up in the late 7...

The Incredible First Lines of Cynthia Weil

Legendary songwriter Cynthia Weil was the queen of the opening lineHall of Fame lyricist Cynthia Weil leaves an extraordinary legacy of familiar hits throughout four decades. She didn’t just write lyrics to some of the most famous pop records of the 1960s. She also wrote some of the most famous first lines in pop music. Weil was initially paired to write with Carole King, but King’s chemist husband, Geoff Goffin, soon became her lyricist. So Weil set her sights, professionally and personally, on musician Jeff Barry, and the couple wrote dozens of hit songs. While the King/Goffin and Mann/Weil ...

Malaka Review: A Wire-ish PBS Masterpiece

Malaka: A Spanish Wire?Malaka, now streaming on PBS Masterpiece, is an entertaining one-hit wonder from Spain. If you like The Wire, you might enjoy this Walter Presents gritty tale of murder, drug dealers, rogue cops, and corruption. But while The Wire’s political subtext always shined through, Malaka offers intense personal drama and a handful of well-developed characters. A Perplexing Murder and a Golden DrugThe murder of Noelia Castenada, the off-the-grid young daughter of a powerful businessman, coincides with the arrival of a dangerous new “golden” street drug. A poorly matched pair of d...

Fanny Rocks on Eve of PBS Doc Premier

Fanny: Pioneering Asian Women Rock Stars of the 70sPhoto copyright Pop Shots Fanny, the legendary all-women rock band of the early 70s, performed an outdoor show in downtown San Francisco supporting a documentary slotted to air on PBS Monday, May 22. After years of being forgotten, the group, now in their 70s, are finally getting acknowledged as pioneers who paved the way for bands like the Go-Go’s and The Bangles. The feature documentary Fanny: The Right To Rock, released in 2022, brought them new fans. It also reminded older fans that, as the group’s most recent album suggests, Fanny Walked ...

Best 70s Crime Movies Turning 50 in 2023

Many of the Best 70s Crime Movies are from 1973 1973 featured a bumper crop of the best 70s crime movies, with hard-hitting early films from noted directors like Martin Scorcese and Terrance Malick, as well as landmark statements from Robert Altman and Don Siegel. Crime films thrived in the hot mess of the early 70s: changing social norms and polarization over war, crime, and equality. These 10 crime flicks are all classics, so let’s look at the influential genre giants of 1973. Best 70s Crime Movies: 1973The Seven-Ups Like French Connection, The Seven-Ups crackles with electricity. The sharp ...

Movie Review: A Nefarious Undertaking

Nefarious: A Fake Horror MovieLike a word salad from the kitchen of Marjorie Taylor Green, the demon spews out many specious claims … Are abortion and euthanasia as egregious as the death penalty? The new “horror” film Nefarious poses but never really answers the question. The movie is the latest right-wing Christian entertainment from directors Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon, the makers of such self-serving recent films as God is Not Dead 2. While you might think it’s a propaganda film, the goal of this work is not to persuade general audiences. Instead, it is simply reinforcement for the a...

Review: The Devil Conspiracy

The Shroud of McGuffinIn The Devil Conspiracy, Dr. Laurent runs a unique In Vitro Fertilization clinic. From a remote mountaintop lab, he converts DNA traces from bones into infant recreations of history’s most famous people, like musical genius Vivaldi. He then auctions them off. Who is behind this disruptive and disturbing activity? Well, his lab is conveniently located — on top of the gates of hell. But Dr. Laurent is a peripheral character in The Devil Conspiracy. The main protagonists are Laura (Alice Orr-Ewing, Sandition), an American art student, and her friend, Father Michael (Joe Doyl...

The Uniquest Artist of the Top 40 Era

No One Even CloseMichael J McMorrow for *op Shots* The most unique artist of the Top 40 era was not some difficult-to-appreciate insider’s favorite championed by out-of-touch rock critics. He was only somewhat popular, having a handful of Top 40 hits and near-misses over three decades — all sounding unlike any other charting act, except for the feeble efforts of a few short-lived competitors. This prolific artist didn’t operate within the confined musical boundaries that others did. For his charting hits, he generally didn’t write chords or melodies or hire someone else to write them. He also ...