Love is Blind Joel and Linda met while on a singles cruise and Joel fell head over heels for her. When they discovered they lived in the same city only a few miles apart, he was ecstatic. He immediately started asking her out when they got home. Within a couple of weeks, Joel had taken…
Category: Mindless Mondays
This Coming Weekend is the Best Pop Cultural Weekend of the Year
Why can’t I wait for this upcoming weekend (August 9th through the 11th)? Welp, it just so happens to be the best pop cultural weekend of the entire year. “That’s a pretty bold claim Alabama Liberal? How can you back that up?”—-Every loud mouth on the internet. All right, I’ll tell you… Friday, August 9th:…
Movie Review: “The Act of Killing” May be the Most Jaw-Dropping Documentary I’ve Ever Seen
A foreign film…an independent foreign film…a independent foreign documentary. That’s what The Act of Killing is, and so, naturally, very few people in the United States will ever even hear of it, let alone watch it. Still, those that do catch it are going to be watching one of the most subtly audacious and thought-provoking documentaries…
TV Reviews: “The Killing”‘s Better Than Expected Season (Plus “Falling Skies”)
For a show that started off being awful (its first two seasons always promised more than they ever delivered), The Killing’s third season sure is an improvement. I’ll admit that I was skeptical that the season could maintain its early momentum and keep from sputtering out into an aimless stream of red herrings. However, the…
Live-Blogging the “Real Time” Season Finale @realtime #realtime
All year long, I’ve been struggling with a case of political fatigue. I just can’t get too excited about the same issues as last year (Republican’s blocking Obama, drone attacks, the endless debate about the economy) without the stakes of an imminent election. That’s why most of the articles this year have been geared more…
Movie Review: Fruitvale Station
I think so many people are focusing on the “importance” (a tricky and subjective word) of this film that they’re really missing out on the film’s true message: the banality of racial tragedy. Obviously, that’s given added meaning in the days sense the Zimmerman trial verdict. What Works: Oscar Grant (played by Chronicle/Parenthood’s Michael B….
Movie Review: The Conjuring
The anticipation of going into this movie may be scarier than the film itself. That being said, I couldn’t help but smirk at the theatergoers saying “Well it wasn’t that scary” on their way out of the theater even as they were screaming their heads ofduring the film. It seems like unless a movie gives you a…
Movie Review: The To-Do List
It follows a formula too much and very few scenes in this movie (about a high school valedictorian trying to become more sexually experienced before she goes to college) are really funny, but in its female-version-of-Porkies way it stumbles onto some real truths about young love/sex and how different it is for boys and girls. What Works:…
Movie Review: Turbo
Ryan Reynolds (the voice star here) had double flops on the weekend of July 19th when he starred in this and R.I.P.D. although this film appears to be doing a little bit better than his fantasy-buddy-cop movie. Apparently, people would rather watch a really fast snail than a Men in Black rip-off, to each their…
Movie Review: R.I.P.D.
This thing pretty much opened and died on opening weekend, so it’s only fitting that I don’t spend too much time with it here. That being said, the grosses were dismal (a 12 million dollar opening for a film that cost well over 100 million to make), the reviews were terrible (a horrible 15 percent…
Movie Review: Red 2
A movie like this is actually really hard to grade because they’re putting so little effort into it to begin with. It’s like it’s almost making fun of itself as it goes along, so it’s a little hard to really find anything that wrong with it (or right with it) without looking like you’re taking…
Movie Review: Pacific Rim
Kicking off the first of a staggering seven new movie reviews today (and hey, a couple of them are even brand new movies) proving once again Alabama Liberal’s diversity is Pacific Rim, a new monster movie that’s either a slight disappointment or the sleeper hit of the summer depending on what article you read and who you…
The Casting of “Gone Girl” is Wrong…And Who Should Have Been Cast
I was one of the very first people to read Gillian Flynn’s masterful, genre-busting “mystery” novel last year (that’s just as much a literary portrait of a sour marriage and a very realistic exploration of the way a psychopath thinks) and I took a certain satisfaction in seeing it stay in the top 10 bestsellers…