494 Best Releases From the Genre Comedy (Page 22)
To All the Boys: Always and Forever
SimilarFreedom Writers (2007), Fried Green Tomatoes (1991),
Primal Fear (1996) What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993),
In the wide world of algorithmically-derived Netflix teen romantic comedies, surely one of the finest was 2018's To All The Boys I've Loved Before, the syrupy-sweet story of adorable bookworm Lara Jean Covey (an always-radiant Lana Condor) and her shockingly-resilient relationship with too-good-to-be-true-except-he-is jock Peter (Noah Centineo). The film did well enough to spawn an entire trilogy based on Jenny Han's YA romances; while the second, To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, still had its fair share of charms, it started to show the cracks in the sunny, conflict-free firmament of Lara Jean's fairy tale romance. Now, the trilogy closes with To All the Boys: Always and Forever, and this time, the decision isn't between Peter and some other boy: it's between Peter and the rest of her life. Continue Reading →
Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
SimilarMadagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008), The Simpsons Movie (2007),
StudioLionsgate,
A decade after their 2011 hit film Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo are back as co-writers and costars in Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar. Their new comedy romp follows Barb (Wiig) and Star (Mumolo), two Midwestern middle-aged suburbanite gal-pals looking to get “their shimmer back” on a trip to the ocean oasis of Vista Del Mar. The wide-eyed duo discovers sea-shell bracelets, hooks up with mysterious Edgar (Jamie Dornan), and accidentally becomes embedded in a murder plot involving super mosquitos. Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar plays like a five minute SNL sketch that stretches into an hour and forty-five fever dream peppered with talking crabs, musical numbers, and culottes. Continue Reading →
하이킥! 짧은 다리의 역습
SimilarHospital Playlist Itaewon Class, The Summer I Turned Pretty, Three Days of Christmas,
A quick look at the best in short features at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
With 50 short films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the programming represented a wide breadth of filmmakers, styles, and world regions. Comprising four shorts programs, two documentary sections, and an animation spotlight, these 50 films display the variability of style and substance in up-and-coming filmmakers in 2021. A few stood above the rest, though, defining the festival as a mixture of heavy topics, comic relief, and an inordinate amount of personal, affected storytelling.
The following seven shorts are listed in alphabetical order. Continue Reading →
那夜凌晨,我坐上了旺角開往大埔的紅VAN
SimilarThe Thirteenth Floor (1999),
In the endless battle for our eyes and souls between Netflix, Disney+ and HBOMax, too often left out of the discussion is Shudder. As far as niche streaming services are concerned, no one is doing it better than them, with a vast collection of classic, international and original horror. They’re also not afraid to push back against horror fans’ often narrow minded definition of what “horror” actually is. After Midnight may confound and frustrate some, but deserves some praise just for trying something a little different. It doesn’t always work, but it tries. Continue Reading →
Belle ma povere
The romantic drama is all beautiful, dreamy surface, and no depth.
Judged solely from the description in the Sundance Festival program notes, viewers may go into Ma Belle, My Beauty expecting a film that suggests what might have resulted if Eric Rohmer had decided to make a movie based on a letter to Penthouse Forum. That notion does sound intriguing, I suppose, but it's a promise that writer-director Marion Hill's debut feature cannot quite live up to in the end with her romantic melodrama that seems to have everything going for it except for an interesting story or characters that you give a damn about.
In the French countryside, newlywed musicians Bertie (Idella Johnson) and Fred (Lucien Guignard) are settling into their new lives after relocating from New Orleans but all is not as picture-perfect as it initially seems and not just because of the discovery in the opening scenes that their not-at-all-symbolic swimming pool is leaking water and requires extensive repairs. While Fred, who is originally from France, settles back into his groove easily, Bertie finds herself in the grips of a mild but persistent depression that has begun to affect her singing to the point where she cannot find the desire to do it. Since she and Fred are due to go out on a tour with their band pretty soon, this is a problem. Continue Reading →
海上浮城
Cathy Yan's debut feature already shows an assured and clever director's eye.
Urban inequality and the rapidly changing landscape of China are at the center of Cathy Yan’s first feature Dead Pigs. A sharp satire filled with plenty of colorful characters, Yan’s debut loosely takes inspiration from an incident that occurred in 2013, when more than 16,000 dead pigs were found floating on the Huangpu, the river flowing through Shanghai. But instead of investigating the cause behind the deadly virus that kills the pigs, Yan chooses to zero in on the human story behind it, exploring five different characters from different social classes who, in one way or another, are impacted by the chain of events leading up to the death of the pigs in question. The result is an ensemble piece that is quirky and funny as it is compelling and gritty.
Set mostly on the outskirt of Shanghai, Dead Pigs begins with Old Wang (Haoyu Yang), one of the farmers who has to deal with the mysterious pandemic that kills his pigs one by one. Wang first assumes that he can salvage his big loss by selling the meat of his deceased pigs to some local butcher shops. But when he realizes that his effort is futile, he decides to start dumping the dead pigs into the river around his house, and unbeknownst to him, all the local pig farmers have also done the same thing. Continue Reading →
On the Count of Three
SimilarBrazil (1985), Italian for Beginners (2000), Mars Attacks! (1996), Talk to Her (2002),
Jerrod Carmichael's grim bromance straddles a delicate balance of tones between comedy and dark thriller, buoyed by a couple of strong performances.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.)
On the Count of Three, the directorial debut from comedian Jerrod Carmichael, walks a tonal tightrope. It’s obvious from the first five minutes that this tightrope exists, and from the first 15 minutes, that it’s not always walked to perfection. Following lifelong, struggling best friends who agree on an end-of-day suicide pact, On the Count of Three combines Carmichael with the recent indie explosion that is Christopher Abbott. Playing Val and Kevin, the two characters spend their final day rewriting old wrongs, revisiting old foes, and seeing if they still can hop on a BMX bike and not shatter their ankles. Continue Reading →
Patch Adams
Patch Adams is full of shit. I truly can’t think of a better way to describe it. I could come up with some convoluted metaphor and tell you that watching Tom Shadyac’s 1998 catastrophe is like going to a restaurant and having the waiter spit on your food. I could call it “Jojo Rabbit for the Clinton Era” or label it a “misguided crowd-pleaser.” But I won’t do any of that because I – unlike Patch Adams – refuse to bullshit you. Continue Reading →
Night at the Museum
SimilarBorat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), King Kong (1933), King Kong (2005), Ocean's Eleven (1960), Snakes on a Plane (2006), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971),
StarringOwen Wilson,
Studio20th Century Fox, Ingenious Media,
The thing about guilt is that it can wear you down until you’re more a cluster of exposed nerve endings than a human being. That, at least, is the premise behind The Night, a new psychological horror and debut film from director Kourosh Ahari. Set in Los Angeles and spoken almost entirely in Farsi, The Night is a wonderfully odd mix of being spare and a bit too much all at once. Continue Reading →
Nobody's Fool
Is there still time for Donald Sullivan (Paul Newman)? Old enough to regret a past he knows he can’t change, Sully staggers around his small town of North Bath, New York. He’s out of work – or at least he should be – after a construction accident left him with a damaged knee and without a lawyer good enough to secure him a settlement. Long divorced, he rents a room from an old woman named Miss Beryl (Jessica Tandy). To amuse himself, he openly flirts with Toby (Melanie Griffith). Continue Reading →
Monsoon Wedding
If you want to know everything about the past, present, and future of America, watch a presidential election unfold. If you want to know the same about India, attend an Indian wedding. Indian weddings are, by and large, a microcosm of the ‘state of the nation’ that culminates in the communion not just of two people, but two entire families. Monsoon Wedding, Mira Nair’s fifth theatrical feature, is a multi-generational epic centered around a single Indian wedding and uses the setting to examine class structures, closeted skeletons, and an oncoming cultural identity crisis of India amid globalization and the emergence of a new generation. Continue Reading →
Psycho Goreman
Steven Kostanski’s second film, and the latest offering from the horror streaming service Shudder, Psycho Goreman attempts to be a throwback to a very specific type of kids' film that will probably never be made again. Spooky, practical effects driven movies of the 80s and 90s that were geared towards children but are actually true nightmare fuel. Films like the tiny demon filled, The Gate, or Little Monsters, a movie that assumes kids would be cool with Howie Mandel hiding under their beds. Continue Reading →
Painting With John
StudioHyperobject Industries,
The first thing you need to know about Painting With John is that you won’t come away from it learning how to paint. Host John Lurie admits in the second episode that, because most of his art is intuitive, he doesn’t know how to teach it, nor does he think just anyone can paint. You won’t learn anything about the history of painting, or the process, or even what supplies one needs to pick up painting as a hobby. This show is strictly about vibing, and somehow, it works. Continue Reading →
新妹魔王の契約者
SimilarThe Dawn of the Witch,
In Hulu’s new original TV miniseries The Sister, we follow Nathan (Russell Tovey) as his life is upturned by Bob Morrow (Bertie Carvel), a figure from his past bringing disturbing news about the missing and presumed dead sister of his wife Holly Fox (Amrita Acharia). This delves into the supernatural and the psychological as Nathan desperately struggles to keep his life and his sanity together. What ensues is a perfectly watchable series full of twists and turns which never quite manages to maintain its tension. Continue Reading →
The Big Lebowski
What’s a day in the life of Brandt (Philip Seymour Hoffman)? You work for a sham: though he may look like a wealthy, self-made entrepreneur, Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston) – your employer – has nothing but his self-image, without much actual money or success to back up his lavish trappings. As personal assistant to Lebowski, your job is to keep up appearances. Try to keep Lebowski’s trophy wife from doing anything too unseemly. Convince anyone and everyone that Jeffrey Lebowski really is a paragon of upper class respectability. Day in, day out, play the thankless part. Continue Reading →
Search Party
We talk with the series co-creator, writer and director about finding the balance between darkness and comedy.
When it first debuted in 2016, Search Party was often compared to Girls and Broad City, mostly because all those three shows deal with the same topics of millennials and hipster culture. But to solely focus on that element will dismiss the excellent craft and surprises that co-creators Sarah-Violet Bliss, Charles Rogers, and Michael Showalter has shown throughout four seasons. After all, this is a show like no other on TV, always radically reinventing itself to keep things fresh.
Season 4 — whose first three episodes were just released on HBO Max last Thursday — is no exception, finding new angles in the story while still retaining what makes the show such a delight in the first place. The only difference is, where the three previous seasons lean more towards the comedic side of the story and keep the darkness secondary, season 4 decides to do the opposite: going full in on the psychological horror of the characters’ journey by taking references from captivity dramas like Room and Misery to an unsettling effect. Continue Reading →
Our Man Flint
From the moment that the James Bond film franchise established itself as a worldwide phenomenon, everyone from the biggest Hollywood studios to fly-by-night European exploitation producers tried to jump on the bandwagon with their own. Although there were a few efforts where no expense was spared—most notably the gargantuan star-studded Casino Royale—most of them were produced on minuscule budgets that tried to replicate the lavish trappings of the typical Bond film with cheapo special effects and loads of stock footage. In addition, few of these efforts were able to find a star with the kind of instant audience appeal that Sean Connery possessed—not even when the producers of Operation Kid Brother (1967) had the ingenious idea of casting Sean’s younger brother Neil in the lead. Many of these films, realizing that they could not compete in therms of scale or star power elected to go the spoof route, but even there, they mostly failed to compete because the Bond films were themselves already semi-spoofs that rare took themselves too seriously. Continue Reading →
Locked Down
SimilarA Clockwork Orange (1971), Match Point (2005), Shaun of the Dead (2004),
Now in 2021, the pandemic rages on, and most of us find ourselves stuck in lockdowns with no end in sight. We’ve dealt with glitchy video calls, adventures in cohabitation, and are stuck with the isolation blues. Here to steal our attention away from the mess is Locked Down, a diverting heist/romance film from Doug Liman, starring Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Continue Reading →
Mr. Mayor
NBC’s new sitcom Mr. Mayor will inevitably be compared to 30 Rock, the network’s previous sitcom from Tina Fey and Robert Carlock. Both feature rich men in power butting heads with their female colleagues. Both shows share a composer, Jeff Richmond (also an executive producer, and Fey’s spouse) crafting another bouncy score. Different from her New York-based shows (30 Rock, Great News, Kimmy Schmidt) Fey and company take on Los Angeles politics this time. While occasionally funny, the show fails to instill a vote of confidence in the future of the series. Continue Reading →
Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist
NetworkNBC,
SimilarFurther Tales of the City, The Singing Detective,
Six weeks after her father Mitch’s (Peter Gallagher) death and funeral, Zoey (Jane Levy) emerges from her self-imposed exile, spurred on by Mo (Alex Newell). In her disconnect from the world, things have changed. Joan (Lauren Graham) is on her way to greener pastures. Leif (Michael Thomas Grant) has done his best to run the fourth floor in her absence, resulting in a fraternity-like atmosphere with Tobin (Kapil Talwalkar) as the unofficial lead “brogrammer.” Her dueling love interests Simon (John Clarence Stewart) and Max (Skylar Astin) have become friends. Life moved on while she sat out and recovered. Or tried to recover, anyway. Continue Reading →