The idea that Counting Crows (and this record) are “alternative” has to be one of the reasons “alternative rock” went from meaning something to being the designation for mainstream rock music in the 90s.
Month: December 2016
Captain Phillips (2013, Paul Greengrass)
This film reminds me a lot of Black Hawk Down, a similarly politically clueless film about East Africa, which is so well made and so compulsively watchable that, as a white Canadian, I stop caring about its political cluelessness.
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015, Joss Whedon)
I pretty much only watch Marvel movies when I am looking for something I don’t have to think about. Civil War was just added so I figured I’d watch that, distract myself from my surgery tomorrow. But then I remembered I hadn’t seen this one, so I figured I’d watch it first. SPOILERS I guess
The Dillinger Escape Plan Live at The Opera House, Friday December 16, 2016
I wanted to go see The Dillinger Escape Plan in August but my friend who likes them had to work both nights. I figured I’d see them next time. Then they announced they were going on “hiatus,” seemingly permanently, and I thought, for the nth time, “Once again I have failed to see a band …
Body and Soul (1993)
I keep a list of movies to watch. There are thousands of movies on the list and I will never watch all of them. I add titles to it all the time. Occasionally, due to laziness, I omit the year a movie was released when I add a movie. I did that with the film …
Night Moves (1976) by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
For much of my life I have had a hatred for “boomer nostalgia” – movies and music that lionize growing up in the ’50s and ’60s as if it was just the bees knees. I am getting to an age where I am finally able to better understand the appeal of such nostalgia – I’m …
The Dilettantes (2013) by Michael Hingston
Full Disclosure: This novel was written by a friend of my brother’s. When I was younger, I reviewed everything without regard to who created it and so wrote some reviews of music made by friends that I didn’t love, though I couldn’t tell them this to their faces because I’m a coward. As I’ve gotten …
The Bridge (2013)
I finished this show a while ago but, convinced there was a third season for some reason, I didn’t write my review at the time. That’s unfortunate, because I feel like I had some things to say, most of which escapes me now.
Body of Lies (2008 Ridley Scott)
I have no idea whether or not this film is accurate as to the day to day actions of CIA operatives in the Middle East – I doubt it, but it is a fictional film after all – but, for much of its run, it is an effective political thriller with a strong sense of …
The 15-Minute Mathematician (2015) by Anne Rooney
I took math through university, being so silly as to think I could minor in it. (I couldn’t…not quite.) But since I graduated I have forgotten so much of the more advanced math that I did understand, and everything I partially understood has utterly vanished – over a decade later, it’s as if I didn’t …
Triple 9 (2016, John Hillcoat)
I am always flabbergasted by movies with huge, all-star casts that somehow suck. I am particularly flabbergasted when it seems obvious to me that these actors could have easily figured out the movie was going to suck and so should never have signed up for them movie in the first place. Such a movie is …