Author: Alabama Liberal

I can’t say I’ve had the privilege of reading the “50 Shades” books, but I honestly did go into the movie with an open mind. That being said, you can tell that an X-rated book has been turned into an R-rated movie, and even though most people have said the movie is better written than…

Only six weeks into the new year, and 2014 has its first better-than-good mainstream movie. Kingsman is well-acted, excellently cast, staged with cunning action sequences, and may be the most genuine fun I’ve had at a movie in months. Don’t let me oversell it though, the film’s not perfect… What Works: I’m only a sporadic Colin…

I’ve written before that the current age of critics seems very tough on both issue-driven domestic indies and also middle-brow dramas, well, “Black or White” is both so, naturally, they royally screwed up reviewing this film. This is a movie that doesn’t romanticize or demonize any of its main characters, and pulls off the tricky balancing act of presenting…

Don’t make the same mistake I did and see this in a theater. This is an Oscar nominee for Best Animated Film that 99 percent of people will never hear of, and I think it would be a much better movie to watch at home when expectations are a lot more…”reasonable.” What Works: It’s a story seeped in…

A crop of unconventional (and largely unsatisfying) thrillers from 2014 that somehow slipped through the cracks when they were initially released… Under the Skin…This is primarily known as the movie where ScarJo gets naked, and the movie seems slyly aware of that since her predatory alien lures horny men to their doom. The problem with…

Will any movie about the Southeast get it right? Maybe one day…but today brings reviews of two Southern thrillers (apparently both set in Texas, but Joe feels more like deep Appalachia…in1977) that have twists and are never unwatchable, but maybe aren’t as authentic or common-sense based as they should to be. Joe…Even though the director…

I think some of the “controversy” over American Sniper feels so much like posturing, it’s almost surreal. Are there really liberals out there who are surprised that a U.S. infantryman doesn’t particularly like Iraqis or doesn’t feel awful for doing his job of killing people? I mean…really? The fact that people from Michael Moore to Bill Maher…

One of this year’s Best Picture nominees and you can sure tell because it feels like “Oscar Bait” should be the unofficial subtitle. Although, between this and Britain’s other prestige “Oscar Bait” movie, The Theory of Everything, I liked this one a lot more. “The Imitation Game” is square and old-fashioned, but always just a…

This Russian-language film is up for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards, and it just might win, but that really won’t matter much while you’re watching it or—more likely—not watching it. What Works: It’s a clever idea to interpret the story of Job in a contemporary Russian setting, and the Leviathan of the title isn’t an…

Personal Note: I have been to Selma, Alabama exactly once for a—strangely enough—scholar’s bowl tournament and it’s a place that is nearly as “unchanged by time” as Cuba. Maybe it was just the part I saw, but most of the buildings looked like they hadn’t changed much since MLK visited, and one guy in the tournament said…