Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture

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…

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…