The Losers, ironically, had a lot going for it. It was adapted from a comic book (which is always a good start these days, since comic movies are so hot); and it featured some big-budget action scenes as well as some geek-friendly marquee up-and-comers such as Jeffrey Dean Morgan (remember him from The Watchmen?), Chris…
Category: (3.5 out of 5)
Movie #15: The Wolfman
By watching The Wolfman right after Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I unwittingly treated myself to a double-bill of gothic horror remakes. In this case, it was the remake of a 1941 black and white movie called “The Wolf Man” (Apparently, after 70 years we’ve learned to live without the space). Though I never saw…
Movie #13: The Book of Eli
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…
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…
Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture 