Home Video: The Universal Classic Monsters Movies and where to buy, rent, or stream them

Halloween is almost upon us, and what better time to reacquaint yourselves with the classics or watch them for the first time! The Universal Monsters have stood the test of time for a reason, each is a classic in its own right, and while this post is by no means an exhaustive list, it does have links for eight of the essential films in the canon.

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Matt’s Favourite Films & Performers of 2020

2020 Best of the Best

2020 has been a hell of a year. With theatres ending up being an unsafe place to be during an ongoing worldwide pandemic you’d think it would be a harder year for film, but looking back it’s clear that this year has been an as vibrant and diverse year for film as any other.

Of course, the difference is that without theatres, there have been far fewer blockbusters and far more indie and middle-tier films. The impact on my film diary for the year has been an interesting one, with bigger budget films losing the endorphin high of the theatrical experience –and thus losing some of the immediate forgiveness they earn if they aren’t great. Additionally, film festivals moved to an online experience either in whole or in part this year, which has meant that I have “attended” more of them.

As a result, I have seen more than 120 of 2020’s films, a steep increase from years past. Narrowing the list down to a group of favourites is as difficult as ever! Also this year, for the second time, I am going to highlight some of the performers that blew me away.

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Matt’s Most Anticipated Movies of 2020, Late Mid-Year Recap

Top Gun: Maverick

Oh hey there. It’s been a weird year and I haven’t been writing again. 2020 has been a challenge, to say the least, and it’s seemed like there have been bigger things going on, and also the ol’ day job has been a little on the intense side.

But things are finally calming down a little so I am back to writing a little. A good place to start is with the films I was looking forward to this year because, well, most of them aren’t coming out this year anymore. Theatres here in Vancouver are re-opening in a limited way, but even if new movies were coming to them (which they aren’t) I don’t think I would feel comfortable going to see them yet. Or for the rest of the year.

So let’s take a look at what I was looking forward to, and see where that leaves us for the rest of the year.

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Matt’s Ten Most Anticipated Films of 2020

Birds of Prey

Every year is a good year for movies but every year there are always those few you are really looking forward to. Here is my list of those movies.

Will these end up being my favourite movies of the year? Who knows! Probably not! The only movies that we know anything about as far away as December are the big-budget blockbusters with marketing pockets so deep we can start hearing about them now. There are hundreds of movies per year that don’t have that.

This list should probably be re-titled “most anticipated big-budget films”, really.

In any event, here is the list. See if you can guess the first entry.

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Trailer Roundup: Bad Boys, Invisible Men, Animated Hedgehogs, and mind bending horrors

MPAA Red Band

I’m behind with the trailer roundup this week so the write-ups may be brief, but there are a ton of trailers to get through so let’s do this thing! You will have noticed the red band at the top of this post so yes at least one of the trailers is rated R, which seems like a natural fit with the kids’ movies also in this post. Fun!

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