So last night the University of Alabama (or “The Crimson Tide”) beat the shit out of LSU in an embarrassing national championship game where the final score was 21 to zero. That’s zero with a z. [Of course, for his part, LSU coach and professional sayer of stupid things said that LSU should receive the…
Author: Alabama Liberal
Entertainment Editorial: I Go to The Metropolitan Opera’s Hansel and Gretel
That may be one of the most awkward titles the site’s ever come up with but there’s no great way to say “hey, I just got back from The Opera” without really saying “Hey, I want you to think I’m pretentious and take my lunch money.” The Metropolitan Opera is an amazing experience, but since…
Movie Review: War Horse
After seeing this movie occupying a low spot on my best of the year list, many already know I like it. Still, let’s review it for shits and giggles. What Works: The last third of this movie really, really delivers. Some of the sequences are so beautiful, I thought this movie was a worthy successor…
Movie Review: The Darkest Hour
This alien invasion movie is lucky I didn’t see it before I made my “Worst of the Year” list because it undoubtedly would have been on it. The Darkest Hour is like any other generic “Aliens are invading!” movie you’ve ever seen except that it’s set in Moscow (and I would be amazed if it…
Movie Review: Shame
I ranked this movie about a Manhattan sex addict as one of the best twenty I saw last year, and that might have been too generous, but I still think it’s worth watching (as long as you’re not with your parents). What Works: Carey Mulligan–too often Michelle Williams’s sleep walking sister–gives the most alive performance…
Movie Review: New Year’s Eve
This movie is dog shit. I hate to start off the new year with such a bad movie, but here it is. [I’m using today to clear out some of the movies that I technically saw last year but haven’t gotten around to reviewing yet.] What Works: Nothing. This movie is one of the absolute…
Sunday’s Sermons: New Year’s Revolution
Even though no holiday is a bad one–at least out of the major ones that get people out of work for a day–my favorite one remains a combination of the last six hours of December 31st and the entirety of January 1st. There’s just something about the promise of New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day that…
Every Movie I’ve Seen This Year, From Worst to Best
To complete the end of the site’s first year, I thought I’d count down from all the movies I’ve seen this year (all 122 of them). From worst of the year all the way down to the best. There are still a dozen of movies I haven’t seen that I think COULD have wound up…
2011 Was a Great Year For the World (Whether The World Realizes It or Not)
I can’t think of a year in recent memory that offered so much and got recognized for so little. This year, people’s moods were generally pretty down thanks to a sluggish worldwide economy and dismal U.S. jobs numbers. [Of course, it doesn’t help that one of the two U.S. political parties tried to milk every…
Petty Issues: End of the Year Edition
As we close out the year, let’s take a look at everything our wonderful Republicans did for us in 2011: First the new Tea Party-led House of Representatives kick started the year by holding the economy hostage over renewing the Bush tax cuts, then they held it hostage over passing a yearly budget, then they…
Monday Morning Movie Reviewer: Mission Impossible 4
It seems like everyone in America saw this movie already this weekend (who knew Tom Cruise could still pack houses like that?) but for those that didn’t…let me muddy the waters of if you should go or not by saying this is a solid B movie. If you like cartoonish action movies (I prefer darker…
Movie Review: We Bought a Zoo
One of the movies that opened during this busy Christmas week, and also (unfortunately) one of the least successful at the box office. It might be a one-joke movie (it’s literally in the title) but it turns out that that one joke is a pretty good one. What Works: Matt Damon instantly elevates this story…
Movie Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
I’ll be right up front in saying I enjoyed this movie. It may not be the movie I was hoping it would be (it was directed by the amazing David Fincher after all), but I feel it did the best possible job it could have with the book’s source material. I haven’t actually read the…