If Looks Could Kill (1991) – William Dear

Richard Grieco takes on the super-spy genre in this teen action comedy. There are nods to the established tropes of the genre, filled with lots of teen humor. Grieco is Michael Corben. An almost high school graduate. He’s receives an incomplete. The only impossible way for him to get the missing credits… join the French…

Scratch One (1967) – Micheal Crichton

Michael Crichton’s second novel, which he wrote under his pseudonym of John Lange, is a fast-paced thriller that plays on the familiar trope of mistaken identity. This time out an American lawyer, Roger Carr, finds himself mistaken for a high-profile hitman and finds himself stuck between opposing sides in an arms deal which has its…

Star Trek: How Much For Just the Planet? (1987) – John M. Ford

Set phasers to absurd! I dug into the next Trek Pocket Book in the series before I dive into the next Dark Tower instalment, and this one left me a little dubious. The book is basically a musical comedy, and it doesn’t always work, but it is steeped in nods to other Trek writers, classic…

The Big Lebowski (1998) – The Coen Brothers

  The next recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book for my screening of Raging Bull (as a sports movie) is one of my all time favorite comedies, and one I quote almost as often as Ghostbusters and Back to the Future. Sports, in the form of bowling, is involved peripherally…