Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture

Movie #25: Kick-Ass

I’m glad that Kick-Ass marks the halfway point of my movie marathon because it really exceeded my expectations. First, I have to come clean that I am a comic-book-loving geek fanboy who would be the intended target of any movie about a teenager who decides to put on a suit and become a superhero (It’s…

Movie #24: Redbelt

I’m done with David Mamet. I loved Glengarry Glen Ross and The Spanish Prisoner so much that I kept watching his subsequent movies even though I found them boring and pointless. I wanted to give Redbelt a chance because it was a totally different kind of story (at least I thought it was). Chiwetel Ejiofor…

Movie #23: Vantage Point

What if 24 took place not over 24 hours, but 24 minutes? And what if instead of a single viewpoint at a time, we got multiple perspectives on the same event. That’s the central premise behind Vantage Point. When the President of the United States (a.k.a. the POTUS) is shot by a sniper’s bullet during…

Movie #22: Whiteout

I thought the concept for Whiteout seemed pretty cool (no pun intended): have a murder-mystery thriller set on a base station in Antarctica. Kate Beckinsale plays U.S. Marshall Carrie Stetko, stationed at the South Pole, who’s just about to retire and go back to the U.S. when the body of a murdered man is discovered…

Movie #21: The Time Traveler’s Wife

Whoever thought that romance and science fiction could be blended so well together? Even though nobody’s trying to prevent robots from taking over the world or stop a global calamity, I think it’s genius that The Time Traveler’s Wife takes a classic sci-fi device such as people traveling in time and uses it to tell…

Movie #20: Ghost Town

With a name like Ghost Town you probably wouldn’t expect the movie to be a romantic comedy. It doesn’t start out like one. Ricky Gervais stars as Dr. Pincus, a year-round grinch who avoids people as much as he can (which may be a challenge since he’s a dentist). After a near-death experience during surgery,…

Movie #19: The Losers

The Losers, ironically, had a lot going for it. It was adapted from a comic book (which is always a good start these days, since comic movies are so hot); and it featured some big-budget action scenes as well as some geek-friendly marquee up-and-comers such as Jeffrey Dean Morgan (remember him from The Watchmen?), Chris…

Salt – Movie Review

From the first moment you see Angelina Jolie in her blonde hair and office clothes she already looks like someone in disguise. That kicks off the central mystery of this movie and its main character. Of course, I have no idea why director Phillip Noyce preferred instead to start with scenes of Evelyn Salt being…

Movie #18: My Sister’s Keeper

I have mixed feelings about My Sister’s Keeper. It’s a very absorbing story about a sister living with leukemia (played by Sofia Vassilieva from Medium), another sister (played by Abigail Breslin from Little Miss Sunshine) who was conceived as a donor match for her, and their family, including a mother obsessed with fighting to save…