Bud Abbott and Lou Costello make their final Universal Monster movie with Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy. I’m not sure if I think this one is better, worse or equal to Meet the Invisible Man. I do know that Meet Frankenstein is their best. This time out, the pair are a couple of would-be…
Tag: comedy
Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951) – Charles Lamont
We’re now moving into the later years of the Universal Monsters and that means they tried to revitalize it and inject some new life into the series by leaning into the addition of the comedy team Bud Abbott and Lou Costello to the series. This time out, the classic comedians are a pair of newly…
The Mummy’s Hand (1940) – Christy Cabanne
I dig into more Universal monsters this week to the first sequel to The Mummy. Released in 1940, The Mummy’s Hand features Tom Tyler as the Mummy. It’s hard to come down on anyone’s side on this one nowadays. The ‘heroes’ are led by an archeologist, Steve Banning (Dick Foran) who is a snappily-dressed American…
The Fall Guy (2024) – David Leitch
Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt deliver a fun action-comedy that reinvents the classic 80s television show and pays homage to a stunt work (which still doesn’t have an Oscar category!). Colt Seavers (Gosling) is a high-profile stunt performer, arguably the best, and he’s been working as Tom Ryder’s (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) stunt double for years. He…
TIFF24 Visionaries – Steven Moffat
The Toronto International Film Festival offers a number of industry panels through the course of the week, and they got started this week with their Visionaries program, and their first one featured Steven Moffat – there was no way I was going to miss that! Set in the Glen Gould Studio at the CBC, the…
Love and Monsters (2020) – Michael Matthews
The charming and likeable Dylan O’Brien stars in the adventure comedy Love and Monsters which serves as a bit of a coming-of-age tale for his character, Josh. Seven years ago, Earth was able to launch enough missiles to stop an asteroid from wiping out the planet, unfortunately, the chemicals used perverted the environment and mutated…
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) – Blu-ray
I’ve been with the Ghostbusters since before the first movie came out, forty years ago. I remember seeing the advertising for it on the back of my comic books, I also tried writing my own version of the story before I even knew what it was or what it was about. I had a little…
Vamp (1986) – Richard Wenk
This one has been on my list to eventually get to for quite some time, and apparently now was the time. If I’d realized how much of a comedy it was before this, I would have dug into it a while ago, Ias it ends up being a lot of fun. If silly. A.J. (Robert…
22 Jump Street (2014) – Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
With some sly remarks about sequels, more of the same, but bigger, 22 Jump Street takes Jenko (Channing Tatum) and Schmidt (Jonah Hill) to college. Once again, the film walks a fine line between raunchy/silly comedy to delivering a commentary on relationships, bromance, and box-office budgets. When the pair are shipped off to college for…
American Fiction (2023) – Cord Jefferson
I’m a little upset that I didn’t go to see this one when it screened at TIFF, but I was very happy that this was a film that my partner and I could watch together, and we greatly enjoyed it. But it’s Jeffrey Wright, the man can do anything, and play anything, and he brings…
The Mind Reels 