I liked this movie, and it gets a little better the more I think about it. [Disregard the ultra-harsh F cinemascore rating, if people knew what a good movie was, Taken 2 wouldn’t have gotten an A.] While you’re watching it, there may be a certain impatience that sets in as you watch hitmen, thieves,…
Author: Alabama Liberal
Movie Review: The Silver Linings Playbook
I really liked this movie. Will you? That all depends. Depends largely on how much you like the style of sometimes dramatic/sometimes-comedic director David O. Russell (I Heart Huckabees, The Fighter, Three Kings) who’s fully operating in dramedy mode, criss-crossing between dramatic scenes that are hilarious and comedic scenes that are maybe trying just a…
Mom Jokes: Grandfathers Don’t Know Everything
Hunter was 4 years old and was staying with his grandfather for a few days. He’d been playing outside with the other kids, when he came into the house and asked: “Grandpa, what’s that called when two people sleep in the same bedroom and one is on top of the other?” His Grandpa was a little…
TV Review: Why The Walking Dead’s Third Season was its Best Yet
The Walking Dead has never had a season as good as the (half) season they just finished, with the rest of the third season airing in February. Honestly, the second season (which found them stuck on a farm and really stuck with the same basic dialogue in every episode) was so tedious and stagnant and…
Like Tonight’s 60 Minutes Story on North Korean Political Prisoners? Read The Orphan Master’s Son
Tonight’s episode of 60 Minutes (hands down the best news magazine on television and arguably the best journalism on broadcast TV) featured a harrowing story of survival for a North Korean political prisoner. He was born, raised, and would have died in Camp 14 (a prison camp that could have more than 15,000 prisoners in…
November’s Book of the Month Club Pick is…Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower!
Am I a day late and a dollar short on picking out November’s Book of the Month Club? Absolutely, and I apologize profusely for that. Even worse, I’m posting it on a Saturday, where many of the people that would really want to see it probably won’t, but I thought the sooner the better… Anyway,…
Movie Review: Lincoln
I loved this movie. This is the type of rousing, sharp, entirely perceptive big-studio drama that Hollywood almost doesn’t make anymore. [It’s telling that a man many credit with “ruining” the adult aesthetic of the 70’s, Steven Spielberg, is now making some of the most mature and sophisticated films out there.] Some may think it’s…
Movie Review: Life of Pi
This is the rare movie I wish I had seen in 3D. [I’m told it has some of the best 3D since Avatar.] And even in two dimensions, Ang Lee’s latest wildcard is visually stunning. The problem I have is that the look of the movie wowed me but it kept me at arm’s length…
Movie Review: Red Dawn
For those that don’t know, this is a remake of the 80’s Charlie Sheen/Patrick Swayze macho-fest where the Russians take over a small town in Colorado, and a ragtag group of misfits (is there any other kind?) fight an insurgency campaign against them. Now, this is a really interesting idea for a movie and it might…
Larger Editorial: What I’m Thankful for in 2012
Today is Thanksgiving, which means two things: 1. Most people are off work, which means they get to experience a day of doing whatever they want and getting paid whatever meager wage their company calls “holiday pay” (or, as bloggers call it, Thursday). 2. You probably aren’t looking to read a block of text. It…
Petty Issues: Sure Signs You’re in the South
5. You know you’re getting closer to the south as the people at each airport get progressively fatter, and those motorized carts (that are supposed to be used to carry the disabled) are really just used to give rides to fifty/sixty year old fat people that don’t want to walk from terminal A to terminal…
Grading the Twilight Films from Worst to…Least Worst
Now that the Twilight saga is officially over, the inevitable question surfaces of “What film is the best? And which one is the worst?” [And the word “best” is used as a loose translation of “which one won’t have me on suicide watch after thirty minutes?”] This is all largely a matter of personal taste,…
Movie Review: Twilight Saga: Thank God It’s Over
Twilight, Breaking Dawn: Part II (you know a franchise has gone on too long when you have to classify its sequels into subsections) will be the most divisive movie of the year. Barack vs. Romney, who cares? “Does Twilight suck or is it, like, the best ever?” That’s the real blood sport taking place across…