Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture

Movie #35: The Double

I love a good, plot-twisty spy thriller. Sadly, The Double was poorly-scripted and poorly-planned. I was surprised to learn that Michael Brandt, the writer-director of this movie, also wrote the screenplay for Wanted, but then I remembered that the weakest part of that movie was the plot. In this movie, Richard Gere plays a retired…

Movie #34: Water For Elephants

Whenever the circus is used as a backdrop, it’s always a kind of magical place. I guess that was even more so during the Great Depression of the 1930s (when this movie is set). Everyone was struggling and life was harsh. People needed to escape to something more exotic and sensational. Water For Elephants captures…

Movie #33: The American

I tried to choose a photo that would not give readers a false impression of The American (nothing with Clooney staring down a scope, or holding a pistol out ready to fire). It is far from being the action-packed, spy-fi thrill ride one might expect. I knew very little about this movie, so it served…

Movie #32: Catfish

While it was definitely not the movie that I had expected, Catfish was also much more engrossing than I expected. I didn’t know much about the movie going in, but I thought that it was a mockumentary. Actually (despite some controversy around the question), it’s a straight documentary. Nev Schulman, a New York photographer, receives…

Movie #31: The Thing

I’m not quite sure how to review a movie like The Thing. I have not seen the original 1982 horror movie classic, but I suspect that it was not too different from the pure creature-feature that this remake is. The movie is set almost entirely in Antarctica, where a group of Norwegian scientists invite a…

Movie #30: My Week With Marilyn

Starting out as the young, misunderstood, blonde, Jen Lindley on Dawson’s Creek, it’s interesting how Michelle Williams has come full circle to play the ultimate young misunderstood blonde as Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn. I’m not really a Marilyn fan, being that of her movies I’ve only seen Some Like It Hot, but…

Movie #29: Unknown

Unknown is the kind of plot-twisting action thriller that I used to love watching (still do, but good ones are not as common these days). Liam Neeson stars as Dr. Martin Harris, a scientist visiting Berlin with his wife (played, quite poorly I might add, by Mad Men‘s January Jones) for a biotech conference. He…

15 Flicks for Fall 2012

As summer is more than half over, it’s time to start thinking about movies for the fall. Sadly, I didn’t end up watching all of last year’s list (at least not in the theatres). Nevertheless, here’s what I’m looking forward to (in vaguely chronological order) for Fall 2012: 1. Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Pt. 2…

The Bourne Legacy – Movie Review

From the opening scene of a silhouetted man floating in the water, The Bourne Legacy begs for comparisons to the first movie, The Bourne Identity (as well as its two sequels). Similarly, Jeremy Renner’s Aaron Cross fights to live up to Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne as the rogue government-programmed assassin du jour. Renner did a…