When charming, mysterious bad boy Jerry (Colin Farrell was born for roles like these) moves into a sleepy Las Vegas neighbourhood on the outskirts of town, some people start to wonder what he’s up to. He’s living next to Charley (played with bashful heroism by Anton Yelchin) and his mom (played by the slightly-too-young-to-be-his-mom Toni…
Category: Fantasy
Movie #24: Conan the Barbarian
In light of all the “reboot” controversies over the last couple of years, it’s interesting that no one seems to care about Conan the Barbarian coming back to theatres. This time, the title character is played by Jason Momoa. It’s kind of odd casting, since he was quite memorable in a very similar role as…
Movie #20: Trollhunter
At first I was growing tired of the “found footage” sub-genre of movies, but recent TV series like the now-cancelled The River, movies like Chronicle and now this movie continue to expand possibilities. The title of this Norwegian film, Trollhunter (Trolljegeren), sounds like a cheesy Syfy channel B-movie, but actually it’s pulled off with a…
Movie #17: Chronicle
I love these kinds of indie films with sci-fi or supernatural premises. In Chronicle, three teenage guys are exposed to some kind of freaky glowing space rock and end up with incredible super powers. Though that story (or one like it) has been done repeatedly (especially in the comic-book world), this movie takes an extremely…
Movie #13: Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
How capable are you at suspending disbelief? If you plan on enjoying Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (and you’re over 10 years old), you’d better be a disbelief-suspending guru! This movie is clearly a family adventure thrill-ride, but if I started listing all the logical inconsistencies and un-buyable nonsense in it, I might not be…
Movie #11: Dream House
Imagine if The Sixth Sense kept going after the big “I see dead people” reveal and the story kept twisting, getting more complicated and even added a final twist with an over-the-top, action-filled ending. Would that ruin a clever premise and drive it into the ground? Well, that’s kind of what happened to Dream House….
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor – Book Review
It was foolish of me not to have realized (even just from the opening epigram: “Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well.”) what this book was going to be like. Daughter of Smoke and Bone is in the same genre as Twilight (and so many…
Movie #8: Hereafter
I can’t believe Clint Eastwood directed this movie (I was even more surprised that there were supernatural overtones to it). I’ve been avoiding his films for the last while because I always found them too manipulative. It felt like it was obvious how he was going to maneuver the characters’ lives in order to make…
Movie #5: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
While I’d played the original 1989 game, I had not seen the 2010 video game on which Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was based. So, I was pretty surprised at the impressive scale of the visual effects that were put into this movie (though less surprised at how they still made the main…
Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture 