When I saw the trailer for The Adjustment Bureau, I saw similarities to two other rather different movies and I wondered which one was closer. With mysterious men-in-hats who secretly manipulate the world, is it going to be a mind-bending proto-film-noir like Dark City? Or when boy meets girl and they are kept apart by…
Category: (3 out of 5)
Midseason TV 2011
I confess I’ve been a bit slow on the draw this year to talk about midseason TV. I guess I’ve been too caught up with my pre-Oscar movie-watching. However, I’ve still found the time to enjoy many of the series which have debuted or returned since the start of 2011. What’s more, many if them…
Movie #50: Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen
After all the indie, foreign, direct-to-DVD movies that I’ve been watching lately in my 50-movie marathon, I thought I’d end my adventure with a blockbuster bang. After the first Transformers movie blew out my eardrums, I was not eager to watch Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen on the big screen. However, since those robots-in-disguise played…
Movie #48: Horsemen
It’s been a while since there’s been a standout psycho-serial-killer thriller (and I’m not counting horror movies like the Saw series in that category). I’m thinking of classics like Silence of the Lambs or Seven. Unfortunately Horsemen may owe a lot to those forerunners, but it’s not exactly a new milestone for the genre. Dennis…
Movie #47: The Outlander
After a slew of indie-type, serious movies, I was really starting to crave some escapist sci-fi. There wasn’t too much of that left that I hadn’t already seen, but I did find The Outlander, which fit the qualifications, but only barely. Jim Caviezel (yes, Jesus does sci-fi too) stars as Kainan: a warrior from another…
Movie #46: Gone Baby Gone
I had never even heard of Gone Baby Gone until my brother recommended it to me. He knows that I like movies full of plot twists, but unfortunately this was still not my kind of movie. This tale of a child abducted from her trashy drug-addict mother and the messiest set of circumstances surrounding the…
Movie #43: Bedtime Stories
It seems a bit harsh to criticize a sweet little kids movie like Bedtime Stories when all it’s trying to do is put a little artificial sweetness out in the world. Adam Sandler plays Skeeter, a (you guessed it) man-child, who was raised in a hotel by his father the owner (cameo by Jonathan Pryce)….
Movie #37: The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
One of the reasons I didn’t rush to see The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is because the trailer made it seem like it was just going to be one long, tense conversation between a NYC subway dispatcher (played by Denzel Washington) and a psychotic hostage-taker (played by John Travolta). To me, a script…
Movie #36: Valentine’s Day
OK, I have to stop claiming that I don’t watch romantic comedies because obviously that’s untrue. However, I can still say that don’t like them because if there are reasons for my liking Valentine’s Day, they have nothing to do with romance. The intersecting tales of a dozen or so characters who go through romantic…
Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture 