Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture

Avengers: Endgame – Movie Review

It’s no doubt a sign of the hype behind this film that I feel slow for watching it on the second weekend. Man, it has been tough to avoid spoilers! Everyone is very sensitive, asking first if you’ve seen the movie before blurting out plot details, and most internet posts contain the appropriate warnings. Nevertheless,…

Captain Marvel – Movie Review

As excited as I was to get more heroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was more “Guardians of the Galaxy”-style cosmic adventures that I was really anticipating. Captain Marvel’s debut movie started out by dropping us into the middle of her day as a Starforce operative on the Kree homeworld of Hala (very far…

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World – Movie Review

After three movies and three TV series, the story of Hiccup, Toothless, and the rest of the clan finally comes to an end. While I would have thought that the last movie in the trilogy would have been a huge blow-out, with epic action and similarly epic storylines, The Hidden World is disappointingly ordinary. The…

Winter TV 2019 – February Shows

January was a big month for TV shows, but amazingly Netflix and other channels just brought even more to the table in February. Maybe the cold weather is keeping us indoors, but all these exciting shows are a good reason to stay in. One Day at a Time Returning for its third season on Netflix,…

Winter TV 2019 – Sci-Fi & Fantasy Drama

Finally, on to my favourite categories of TV: sci-fi/fantasy dramas. I love how shows can really build a world and a universe; and really open up the experience of these kinds of imaginative characters and adventures in a way that movies just cannot do. I also love how streaming TV has given a channel for…

Winter TV 2019 – Kids/Animated

With all the comedies, movies, and prestige dramas coming to streaming TV, many people may not realize (unless they have kids) that it’s also a channel with a growing number of animated series and kid-oriented shows. Knowing that often their target audiences are the kids of parents who grew up with “Saturday morning cartoons”, reboots…

Winter TV 2019 – Comedy

Whoa my goodness! I’m trying my darnedest to watch over a dozen shows which have debuted or made their season premiere within the last month. In the TV universe, winter has apparently become the new fall. If anyone was still doubtful that streaming had revolutionized the television programming landscape, this should definitely prove it —…

Aquaman – Movie Review

It’s great to enjoy some superhero action during the holidays, and despite the uneven track record of DC Comics movies so far, Aquaman was enjoyable, light, adventure fare. Director James Wan (of Fast and Furious fame) smartly avoided the loud, dimly-lit, incoherent example of Zack Snyder’s Justice League movies, and skewed closer to Wonder Woman….

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – Movie Review

After having seen so many super-hero movies (especially Spider-Man movies) already, I did not expect to be impressed (never mind blown-away) by this movie. It not only needed to bring something fresh to the well-trodden Spider-Man story, but in order to be visually impressive, it also has to compete with Pixar’s animation benchmark and other…