Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture

Empire of Silence (The Sun Eater, Book 1) by Christopher Ruocchio – Book Review

We start with a story that the main character (and sole point of view), Hadrian Marlowe, is recounting: his life story after he has achieved the notoriety of being named “Sun Eater”, due to his having destroyed a sun, killing millions of enemy aliens. But that story is not part of this book (presumably we…

Wicked – Movie Review

I am a big fan of the Wicked musical. It’s one of my favourites. So I came to this movie with love for the material, along with high expectations. Shockingly, and happily, this film adaptation exceeded them all, and brought the musical wonderfully to cinematic life. I enjoyed the stage musical primarily for its soundtrack….

Creepily Catching Up With It & It Chapter Two

To celebrate spooky season this year I read some scary stories, and decided to finally watch the movie adapting Stephen King’s It (from 2017) and It Chapter Two (from 2019). Despite being old enough to have watched it on TV when it originally aired in 1990, I decided not to check out the Tim Curry…

Hellboy: The Crooked Man – Movie Review

As we have entered “spooky season”, I find myself once again looking for chilling stories (but nothing too scary for us chickens). Because I’ve always been a fan, I find myself turning to the latest Hellboy movie. The gruff, bruiser, quasi-anti-heroes are great characters to use as protagonists for exciting, action-fantasy stories (see also Marvel’s…

Deadpool & Wolverine – Movie Review

It is probably the most anticipated movie in a long while (not necessarily by me) and it was a lot of fun, but I find myself wondering how far Deadpool & Wolverine will really go to reverse Disney/Marvel’s fortunes. In fact, that backstory surrounding recent MCU flops like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Secret Invasion,…

Catching up with genre TV: Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel, Doctor Who, and more

It has been a long minute since I last posted, but I admit I’ve been feeling a bit of entertainment ennui. Most of my favourite franchises have been so mediocre and underwhelming. A lot of hype in the fandoms has been around how they appear to have gone “woke”, and that being the problem. I…

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – Movie Review

I never watched the original Planet of the Apes series of films (starring Charlton Heston back in the 1960s and 70s), but I am a fan of the recent trilogy of Apes films (2011-17) that told an origin story for what led the apes to take over the world from humans. (I also watched the…

Oscar Schmoscar 2024 – Oppenheimer, Barbie, Past Lives, Elemental, Nimona, & The Creator

I started this semi-annual post to acknowledge that I’m not always interested in the movies that get nominated or win Oscars. This year is definitely no exception in that there were very few nominated films that I had already watched prior to the nominations (and in fact, relatively few movies have caught my eye over…

Dune Part 2 – Movie Review

The first part of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel Dune was amazing. Visually stunning, it delivered an engaging story that brought Herbert’s characters to life and made this incredible, fictional universe feel very real. This second part continues right where the first film left off: Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his…