Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture

Movie #44: We Need To Talk About Kevin

Wow. I literally don’t think I’ve hated watching any movie so much as this one. Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers had been the defending champ, but Mickey and Mallory have now lost to Kevin and Eva. To be clear, it was not the subject matter that turned me off. In fact, I found a movie…

Movie #43: John Carter

Hearing that there’s going to be a big-budget sci-fi-fantasy movie made, gets me pretty excited. But when the movie turns out to get bad reviews, I get a bit nervous to watch the movie for fear of how they’ve botched something that could have been really good. I was going to save John Carter for…

Movie #42: We Bought A Zoo

I figured that this movie would be sweet and sentimental, but I did not expect how adorable it would be. Based on a true story, We Bought A Zoo is about a journalist-adventurer named Benjamin Mee (played by Matt Damon) who wants to make a fresh start with his two kids, after the death of…

Movie #41: The Debt

I set myself up for a Helen Mirren double-bill by watching this movie and The Tempest back to back. I had heard good things about The Debt but was hesitant to watch it in the theatres because it seemed to have that retro Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy vibe (and I hated that movie). Who knew…

Movie #40: The Tempest

I’ve been fascinated by William Shakespeare’s The Tempest ever since I first learned that this “olde tyme” playwright (that our teacher was making us read) had written a tale featuring spirits, spells and sorcery rather than his usual cast of English kings and queens. When director Julie Taymor’s version came to the screen featuring actress…

Movie #39: Rabbit Hole

Rabbit Hole seems like one of those hard-to-enjoy movies while you’re watching it; one that you may or may not appreciate by the end. Nicole Kidman gives an Oscar-nominated performance as Becca, the mother of a young boy who died in a car accident. Becca and her husband Howie (played by Aaron Eckhart) go through…

Movie #38: Shrek Forever After

I’m not quite sure why I watched this movie. I was a big fan of the original Shrek; I liked how it upended fairy tale conventions and made a monster into a hero. The satirical, contemporary jokes played really well in a storybook context. However, Shrek Forever After comes three whole movies later, after the…

Movie #37: Moneyball

First off, I am no sports fan (and sports movies are not high on my list either), but a friend suggested that Moneyball was good enough that I might enjoy it anyway — and he was right. Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane, a former pro baseball player who became the general manager of the Oakland…

Movie #36: Burlesque

I was a fan of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, so I was excited that maybe this was another movie like that. Moulin Rouge fans might appreciate the musical numbers, but Burlesque is not nearly as imaginative or interesting as the Nicole Kidman classic. This is largely a vanity project for Christina Aguilera (with a little…