Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture

Movie #3: It’s Complicated

I don’t want to seem like a movie snob, but I’ve never been a fan of romantic comedies. I think it’s mostly because of their contrived, simplistic formulas and trite takes on human relationships. However, once in a while one of them catches my attention (and having Meryl Streep in the lead doesn’t hurt one…

Twilight: Eclipse – Movie Review

I enjoy vampire stuff, but it’s ironic that the teen romance elements drawing so many fans to the Twilight “saga” is the thing that turns me off the series (I guess it’s not that ironic, since I’m not a tween girl). After watching New Moon, I wasn’t eager to catch up with the human-vampire-werewolf love…

Movie #2: Legion

I know Legion didn’t really look that good, but it had Paul Bettany as Michael the (de-winged) archangel coming to earth to kick butt and protect a pregnant waitress from Nowheresville, USA. Her baby was going to save humankind from extinction at the hands of angels carrying out the wrath of God. Somewhere in that…

Movie #1: Shutter Island

A lot of movies catch my eye, but with all the mediocre reviews and bad word-of-mouth these days, I don’t end up seeing a lot of them in the theatre. However, they do make it on to my mental list for some future date to screen at home from the comfort of my living room….

The Last Airbender – Movie Review

M. Night Shyamalan used to be one of my favourite directors. He knew just how to captivate the imagination with his storytelling; to bring a bit of wonder and fantasy to the ordinary world (even his American Express commercial capitalized on that specialty). However, his recent efforts have shown that he doesn’t really understand what…

Summer TV 2010

Sun is shining, weather is nice, perfect time to stay inside and watch TV, right? Well with all the new and returning shows, that’s probably what the networks would like you to think. Summer TV has definitely been growing over the past few years. Besides the bevy of reality shows, there are a number of…

Splice – Movie Review

I wonder what Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein would have been like if rewritten as a modern-day bio-sci-fi horror movie. Would Frankenstein fear the monster? adopt the monster? teach it to spell? dress it up? have sex with it? Splice is only a thematic descendant of that Victorian gothic novel, but I guess the issue of science…

Knight and Day – Movie Review

I can see the pitch meeting now: “What if we took Ethan Hunt from Mission Impossible and combined him with Jerry Maguire? And we can cast Tom Cruise in the role!” Though it sounds like a winning idea to take two of Cruise’s more popular roles and try to make a box-office-stomping hybrid, but Roy…

Toy Story 3 – Movie Review

It’s been 11 years since the last Toy Story installment and 15 years since the first movie. How could even a pop-cultural cynic blame Pixar if they were milking the franchise, churning out inferior product just to balance the books in this tough economy? (See how the mighty Shrek has fallen!) Fortunately, that’s not the…