545 Best Releases From the Genre Comedy (Page 16)

Amy Schumer made a name for herself in the comedy scene as a stand-up for whom sex and booze were cornerstones of her act. She was a refreshing performer, helping to break down barriers for women in comedy, and showing the world that female comedians can be just as raunchy as their male counterparts. Her newest venture is an evolution of the party girl in Hulu’s Life & Beth, with Schumer portraying titular character Beth, a woman “barreling towards 40,” amid an identity crisis. The series, like Beth, is also in an identity crisis, as structurally it struggles in its episodic format. However, there are some strong performances by Schumer and a supporting cast of comedic heavy-hitters that make the series an entertaining watch.  Continue Reading →

We don’t step foot on an NBA court until the final minutes of the first episode of HBO’s new docu-series, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. This isn’t an accident; it’s a show with more on its mind than the x’s and o’s of a regular-season game. It’s not a series about the game of basketball but about the business of basketball - specifically, the moment the NBA goes from a poorly attended, barely-regarded sports league to the global entertainment juggernaut it is today.  Continue Reading →

Is Satanic panic even a thing anymore? When’s the last time we’ve heard anything about backmasking, or songs somehow influencing impressionable teenagers to kill themselves? It’s entirely possible that this is all still a thing, and I’m simply too old and out of touch to know anything about it. B.J. McDonnell’s Studio 666, the feature film debut of Foo Fighters, is a lovingly hokey homage to a time when “the Devil’s music” was such a grave concern for parents (and Tipper Gore) that Congressional hearings were held about it, and lawsuits were filed against heavy metal bands in an attempt to hold them responsible for what was more likely caused by untreated mental illness and drug abuse. Continue Reading →

Known for blending horror and comedy to varying success, writer/director Richard Bates, Jr. looks to find wit and wisdom through a coven of witches in King Knight, his latest collaboration with actor Matthew Gray Gubler. As the head of the coven, Thorn (Gubler), along with his high priestess partner Willow (Angela Sarafyan), give three couples advice, organize Beltane and other holidays, and collectively recognize the power of French star Juliette Binoche. Following the coven after Thorn’s secretive lacrosse-laden past is revealed, Bates’s film meanders along a path of hallucinations, low stakes interactions, and a high school reunion that neither satisfies nor energizes a project that outstays its initial, quirky welcome. Continue Reading →

The love of an animal can be transformative. The mix of companionship and responsibility that taking care of a pet entails can help create stability in an otherwise chaotic life. So it's no surprise that several movies explore the relationship between humans and canines. Continue Reading →

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When we talk about what movies “couldn’t be made today,” it’s less about what tweaks would need to be employed to make them for a contemporary audience, and more about whining that P.C. culture has killed comedy and it’s never coming back. It also doesn’t take into account that pre-2000s comedy wasn’t entirely a lawless land of misogyny and casual homophobia. There are quite a few films from that era that could easily be made today, just as they were then, with virtually no tweaking or updating for an audience of “snowflakes” that doesn’t actually exist. One of those was Penelope Spheeris’s Wayne’s World, released thirty years ago today. Continue Reading →

There's been a complete dearth of quality rom-coms in recent years, to the point that the bonkers premise for Marry Me probably has the casual viewer raising an eyebrow. Owen Wilson and Jennifer Lopez in a rom-com is the kind of elevator pitch that would probably headline in a movie in the mid-aughts, but viewers could hardly be blamed for assuming it falls somewhere between “fine” and “unwatchable disaster”. Yet despite the odds (and Wilson’s extremely unfortunate haircut), Marry Me is actually a delight.   Continue Reading →

After shopping the BigBug’s script around for four years, writer and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet finally found a home for his absurdist robot-centric comedy with Netflix in January 2020. Cue the pandemic just a few months later. Unfortunately, the ensuing delay lasted just long enough for Jeunet to add some of the most cringe-worthy Covid mentions I’ve seen to date.  Continue Reading →

Throughout Suspicion, Rob Williams’s English language adaptation of False Flag, teases of revelations and insights dangle in front of the audience. These remain teases. Even when the show’s final twist hits, it reveals new information without deepening our understanding of the characters. Continue Reading →

For many, turning thirty marks the end of your youth. A lot of people believe that you should have yourself figured out and should be on a set path by the time you complete your third decade of life. However, life often doesn’t work like that, and it’s not uncommon for people to “find themselves” well into their thirties or beyond.  Continue Reading →

Murderville has a terrible premise. It’s a parody of police procedurals, but also involves improv comedy, performed mostly by actors not known for their improvisational skills. It sounds like forced laughs of the most uncomfortable kind, where the jokes are sparse and the flop sweat is flowing. It shouldn’t work at all. And yet, somehow, it not only works, it’s a genuine delight, and a respite from a relentlessly bleak season. Continue Reading →

As the old adage goes, "With age comes wisdom." But as Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, and the rest of the Jackass gang have refreshingly proven, sometimes the best way to stay forever young is to just stick close to your childhood buddies and keep doing the same dumb shit to each other over and over again. And since Jackass aired its first episode on MTV in 2000, that's exactly what they've been doing, finding ever more creative ways to kick themselves (and each other) in the balls, sic wild animals and insects on them, and generally flaunting the rules of polite society and personal safety. With Jackass Forever, the fourth anthology movie in the series, Johnny and the rest are a little older, but no more wiser, and we're all the more thankful for it. Continue Reading →

The 2012 Bountygate scandal pushed New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton toward his son, as he spent the season he was suspended from the NFL on the sidelines of a sixth-grade football team. Briefly: “Bountygate” sprung out of a system that Payton, his assistant Head Coach, the Saints’ former defensive coordinator, and the team’s General Manager put into practice that paid players bonuses for injuring key members of opposing teams on the field.  Unfortunately, this is the true story at the heart of Home Team, a trite Kevin James vehicle depicting the public suspension of Payton just two years after the Saints victory at Super Bowl XLIV. This isn’t a rise and fall story. It’s a continuous landslide, 95 minutes that reaffirm Payton as an unsupportive father, a way-too-intense football coach, and an all-around negative person to be around.   Continue Reading →

Ice Age’s creativity melted away so long ago that it may as well have vanished at the end of the actual Pleistocene. The series’ diminishing returns culminated in 2016’s disastrous Ice Age: Collision Course, a picture that made the name Ice Age synonymous with “empty cash grab.”  And yet, as paleontologists do, Disney’s gone to dig it up. But rather than, say, exciting discoveries about the lives and times of woolly mammoths, all that the excavation of Ice Age has resulted in is another crummy movie: The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild. Continue Reading →

Reunions can be murder. You’ve got to fool yourself into thinking you look as good or better than you did at 18. Then you have to draw to make that delusion reality. Clothes. A new haircut. Makeup. Perhaps a fun new accessory you can pretend has always been your thing. Then you get there. You see exes, people you hated who have the nerve to look great and be successful, and former classmates who remind you that you were kind of terrible as a teenager, too. Continue Reading →

(This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Festival) Continue Reading →

At this point, the wine-soaked citizen detective has become its own genre. Adaptations of boilerplate mysteries like The Girl on the Train and The Woman in the Window give plenty of fodder for Netflix’s newest series: The Woman In The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window starring Kristen Bell as the titular Woman. Of course, spoofs and parodies are all well and good. Considering that Netflix also produced Woman in the Window, though, this newest feels a bit like having your cake and eating it too.   Continue Reading →

With When You Finish Saving the World, Jesse Eisenberg directs Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard to strong turns as a mother-son duo united by self-obsession. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.) Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut When You Finish Saving the World reminds me of Alex Ross Perry and Noah Baumbach’s early work. Its dialogue is witty and often cringe-inducing. Its characters are deeply flawed, unlikable people out to hurt each other. Given that Eisenberg worked with Baumbach on The Squid and the Whale, the similarities make sense.  Continue Reading →

The latest from oddball extraordinaire Riley Stearns is a sci-fi curio about scrambling to find your will to live. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.) Writer/director Riley Stearns introduces the viewer to the offbeat world of Dual through something of a Hunger Games or Twilight Zone knock-off, with a bloody duel between two men who look exactly the same as an audience watches. It’s a smart and captivating start, one flooded with Sterns’ usual dark sense of humor, and one that introduces the core premise succinctly: in a world where you and your double both want to live, how willing and able are you to survive a duel to the death?  Continue Reading →