At first, The Book of Eli looks like just another post-apocalyptic B-movie. A lone traveller (played by Denzel Washington) hacks and slashes his way through desert biker gangs preying upon innocent passersby. I feel like I’ve seen this movie many times before. Then he arrives at a dust-bowl town in the middle of the endless desert…
Category: (3.5 out of 5)
Movie #12: (500) Days of Summer
I guess if (500) Days of Summer is going to be a romantic comedy for the indie-film set, you can’t go wrong by casting Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the leads. They are both good actors with a taste for the off-beat, but both cute enough to make for a likeable couple that you…
Movie #11: Moon
One thing I’ve learned about indie sci-fi is that it’s usually high-concept. Moon is no exception (though I don’t want to reveal how, exactly). Sam Rockwell stars as Sam Bell, a lowly labourer maintaining and monitoring harvester machines as they glean high-energy elements from the moon. He’s all alone and spends the duration of his…
Movie #7: A Single Man
A bit of a change of pace, A Single Man is the Oscar-nominated (best actor nod for Colin Firth) drama directed by fashion designer Tom Ford (movie-goers will know him as the Man Who Dressed James Bond). Naturally, I expected something stylish, with everyone impeccably dressed, filmed at interesting camera angles, each shot a potential…
Movie #6: Taken
I put off seeing Taken because I find kidnapping stories a bit too tense with the emotional stakes involved. Plus, there’s always some weepy mother who won’t let the hero take the risks needed to get the victim back. Anyway, that’s what I expected, so I was in no rush to see Liam Neeson play…
Movie #3: It’s Complicated
I don’t want to seem like a movie snob, but I’ve never been a fan of romantic comedies. I think it’s mostly because of their contrived, simplistic formulas and trite takes on human relationships. However, once in a while one of them catches my attention (and having Meryl Streep in the lead doesn’t hurt one…
Knight and Day – Movie Review
I can see the pitch meeting now: “What if we took Ethan Hunt from Mission Impossible and combined him with Jerry Maguire? And we can cast Tom Cruise in the role!” Though it sounds like a winning idea to take two of Cruise’s more popular roles and try to make a box-office-stomping hybrid, but Roy…
Iron Man 2 – Movie Review
This Iron Man sequel picks up from the first movie after Tony Stark (played as cocky as you’d expect by Robert Downey Jr.) had announced to the world that he was the man in the iron suit. Things are not great for the fantastic Mr. Stark even as the world/U.S. sees him as a hero….
Inglourious Basterds – Movie Review
Most of us come to a Tarantino movie expecting the usual trademark elements: visceral, somewhat gratuitous violence; complicated, witty, scummy, razor-sharp dialogue; and complex, interweaving storyline featuring interestingly off-colour characters. So how does that blend against a backdrop as often-used as WW2/Nazi-occupied France? Well, let’s just say he makes it work (for the most part)….
Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture 