At The Movies with Bryan, the Wannabe Filmmaker

In the movie industry, timing is everything. In case of Idle Hands , its release date couldn’t have come a more inopportune time, April 30, 1999 – ten days after the Columbine shootings.   The movie opened to poor reviews (16% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and an even worse box office ($4 million gross against a $25 million dollar budget).  It was nearly impossible for many critics to separate the ending of this movie from the tragedy that occurred in Colorado.  Duane Dudek of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel wasn’t alone when he wrote, “This film smacks of poor judgment and bad taste, particularly in wake of the Littleton, Colo., killings.”   However, it would be disingenuous to blame Idle Hands'  piss poor box office entirely on the critics, after all, Stephen Sommer’s The Mummy was released the following weekend; Star Wars, Episode I – The Phantom Menace hit theatres shortly afterwards, May 19,1999. The reality is that Idle Hands simply didn’t stand a chance against these two j

I have a soft spot for Jaws 2. This is mainly due to the sense of nostalgia it evokes whenever I watch it, as opposed to it being a good movie. It was one of the very first movies my dad recorded on our VCR (in 1986) and, in fact, I saw Jaws 2 before I saw the original movie (we rented Jaws a few months later).  I was seven years-old at the time, therefore, I could have cared less about character development, or plotting, the only thing that mattered to me was the shark. As unnecessary sequels go, Jaws 2 isn’t bad, especially when compared to the countless Jaws rip-offs that were being produced at the same time ( Orca, Grizzly, Humanoids from the Deep, and Barracuda, to name a few ).  I would even argue that it is even better than the source material, Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws, which inspired the first movie.  Benchley’s novel is a truly dreadful piece of exploitation – it is equivalent to the kind of cinematic trash that Roger Corman was producing at New World Pictures at time

From 1940 to 1956, the comedy team of Abbott and Costello made 36 movies together. In that sixteen year span they made one genuine classic ( Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein), some very good comedies ( Hold That Ghost, Pardon My Sarong,The Time of Their Lives, Who Done It?, Buck Privates), and a few forgettable movies ( Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Mexican Hayride, Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff). However, it says a lot about their appeal that even their lesser movies are constantly amusing, if not particularly funny (I have a soft spot for Abbott & Costello Go to Mars ).  Who Done It? was the fourth (and last) movie Abbott and Costello made in 1942 and it is easily one of their better movies. It benefits greatly from a fine supporting cast (particularly William Bendix as a dimwitted detective and Mary Wickes as a lanky secretary) and some top notch direction by Erle C. Kenton – a gifted studio director whose best known for the horror