Well if that title’s not enough of a mouthful for you, you’re in the right place. Clearly, you’re a dedicated Alabama Liberal fan, which you might have to be to care about this independent film that few people have seen, and fewer still have liked. Sure, the Golden Globes threw it some nominations, but that’s…
Category: Mindless Mondays
Oscar Nominations are Announced…Who Will Win, Who Should Win, and Who Was Robbed
Gooooooooooooodddddddddamn, these nominations were some tricky devils, diverging heavily from the Screen Actor’s Guild, the Director’s Guild, and the Golden Globe awards. [Although the Golden Globes shouldn’t be entirely unexpected, as the Academy has embraced a more independent-movie-based mindset than their gaudy, celebrity-driven friends in the Hollywood Foreign Press.] Oh well, let’s get to it……
TV Reviews: Justified’s Great Season Premiere, and Deception’s Lousy One
And now, a study in opposites as I review one terrific show kicking off its 4th season with a solid, firing-on-all-cylinders episode and a brand-new show that already feels stale. Deception…I like to do the bad news first, and NBC’s new Monday night drama Deception (for those that are restless for Revolution to come back)…
Movie Review: Zero Dark Thirty
My pick for the third best movie of the year is tense, thrilling, and contains yet another great performance from phenomenon-on-the-rise Jessica Chastain. The film contains one big flaw (which I’ll get to below) but it’s hard to imagine anyone really hating this movie. It’s not the near-perfect film that The Hurt Locker was, but…
Movie Review: Django Unchained
It’s not possible for Quentin Tarantino to make an uninteresting film, but I would argue that Django Unchained may be his first bad one (depending on exactly how you felt about Death Proof, his half of Grindhouse), and left me underwhelmed. Is it in poor taste to make a slavery/spaghetti-western/blaxploitation mashup? Maybe it is, but…
Movie Review: “Promised Land,” an Underdog Movie You Should Seek Out
Sometimes a movie opens and you can just tell it’s destined to slip through the cracks and be underrated. Promised Land is already one of those movies, as it opened and died in theaters this weekend and is unlikely to get any Oscar nominations when those are announced on Thursday. And yet, it’s my pick…
Mom Jokes: The Medium
In a dark and hazy room, peering into a crystal ball, the Mystic delivered grave news: “There’s no easy way to tell you this, so I’ll just be blunt. Prepare yourself to be a widow. Your husband will die a violent and horrible death this year.” Visibly shaken, Laura stared at the woman’s …
Every 2012 Movie, From Worst to Best
Just like last year’s list, this won’t be every movie that came out in 2012, but instead a list of the movies I’ve reviewed (and some that will be reviewed in the near-future). Because, well, one of our favorite things about the end of a year is listing everything we liked (or didn’t), so why not get…
The 10 Best Novels of the Year
Are these the best books of the year? Obviously, I have no idea, as I haven’t read a large majority of the novels that were released in the last year. I’ll just say I’ve read most, not all but most of the ones that have been placed on End-of-the-Year lists (notable exceptions include The Twelve…
Book Reviews: This is How You Lose Her, Sutton, The Round House, Live by Night, and Back to Blood
Note: Nearly all of these books have been featured on “Best Books of the Year” lists, and yet, I found all of them to be lacking in some fundamental way. The subtitle of this article could almost be “When Everyone Else Loves a Book that You Merely Like” but that wouldn’t fit on the Twitter…
5 TV Shows to Swear Off in the New Year
Sadly, Christmas is now behind us, and it’s time to focus on the New Year. And what better way to do it than to think about managing your time. And what better way to think about managing your time than to start picking off good-for-nothing TV shows that might have started off good but have…
Movie Review: This is 40
A big studio film with the soul of an independent movie, and a damn good one too. What Works: I liked this movie more than I really could have anticipated. Whereas some of Judd Apatow’s previous films (like The 40 Year-Old Virgin and the overrated Knocked Up) jumped off from a high-concept premise but gradually…
Movie Review: The Girl
This is a bit of a cheat since it aired on television, but HBO’s The Girl feels enough like a real movie to warrant a review. It has at least two recognizable stars (Sienna Miller, Toby Jones), and a biographical story (about Alfred Hitchcock’s obsession with actress Tippi Hedren, his star in The Birds and Marnie) that…