Seeing the trailer and premise for The Informant! (plus the tongue-in-cheek exclamation point), I expected Matt Damon’s character to be goofy and bumbling (Paul Blart: FBI snitch), but leave it to director Steven Soderbergh to pull off an interesting and thought-provoking character study laced with odd, retro humour. (Is it my imagination, or do the…
Category: (4 out of 5)
9, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, and Dragon Hunters – Capsule Reviews
Recently I’ve seen a few animated movies, and while they don’t have anything in common, I thought I’d present them together in a set of capsule reviews. 9 When Elijah Wood last played a diminutive hero courageously seeking to save the world (in Lord of the Rings), it took over 10 hours to tell the…
District 9 – Movie Review
I’ve mentioned before how much I like “intelligent” sci-fi movies: in other words, ones which spend more effort on concept and story rather than just perfecting the CGI or blowing things up in cool ways. District 9 falls into the “intelligent” camp even though its concept is not the brain-twisting kind. Essentially, in the 80s…
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – Movie Review
It’s been a while now since I saw the movie (I’m on vacation) but I didn’t want to let an HP milestone go by without some comment on this blog. For those of you not Potter afficienados, Half-Blood Prince is the second to last book in the Potter series and (because they are making two…
Terminator Salvation – Movie Review
With the recent(ly cancelled) series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, still so fresh in the pop culture atmosphere, it’s odd that they’d be going forward with the movie series as well. Granted, the franchise reboot is becoming a sub-genre of its own these days, but for this series it’s getting a bit confusing. Nevertheless, when…
The Tivo Has Spoken – Alvin’s 2009 TV Scorecard
Now that the TV season is over, what did I think of all the series I watched this year? A lot of times it comes down to what I watched first (Medium, Supernatural, Lost, Privileged, Pushing Daisies) and last (Smallville, Cupid) on my Tivo. We hardly knew ye… (New shows cancelled.) Privileged – Definitely one…
State of Play – Movie Review
With a cast that boasts three Oscar winners and a director who won an Oscar himself, I would have expected more from State of Play. The movie gives us some pretty good performances and a serviceable script with some twists, but overall nothing too memorable. Oscar-winner Russell Crowe plays Cal McCaffrey, a veteran reporter at…
Midseason 2009, Part 3: March
Yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m still posting about midseason TV (I promise this is the last one). As the TV season continues on, some shows actually ended in March, but a few others just began. I love how this new rolling TV schedule keeps things interesting all year round. Reaper The…
Watchmen — Movie review
In the geek universe, there is no more anticipated film this year than Watchmen. The complex story is set in an alternate 1980s where someone is killing off costumed superheroes, an omnipotent nuclear man wrestles with his humanity, and the world lies at the brink of Armageddon. Adapting the widely-acclaimed graphic novel masterpiece to the…
