This is an incredibly stagey French adaptation of a British play. I’m not familiar with the playwright but I can’t imagine getting excited about seeing one of his plays, if this is faithful.
Tag: Comedy
Steel Magnolias (1989, directed by Herbert Ross)
This is one of those “women’s movies” that I avoided like the plague when I was younger. (Not entirely true – when I was in my teens I would catch 10 minutes of one on TV and rate it without watching it, inevitably giving it a ridiculously low rating.) One of the many things I …
Heathers (1989, Michael Lehmann)
At some point when I was younger, I told myself I had watched Heathers though I either confused it with some other ’80s movie featuring Christian Slater and/or Wynona Ryder or I saw five minutes of it and decided that counted. Anyway, I had definitely not seen Heathers.
Citizen Ruth (1996, Alexander Payne)
This is a very funny movie about a pregnant drug addict and the war to get her to keep the baby or get an abortion. It’s dated a bit in terms of how we depict addiction but, otherwise, it feels like it is (sadly) still relevant and is definitely worth your time.
City Island (2009, Raymond De Felitta)
I don’t know if there’s a name for the subgenre of films in a which a person comes into a family’s life and helps them solve their problems, but there should be. If there isn’t, I propose “Magic Stranger”.
American Women aka The Closer You Get (2000, Aileen Ritchie)
This is a mostly endearing little comedy about how, with some modifications, happiness is often looking you right in the face when you don’t even know it. the message of being happy with what you’ve got is a good one, though I’m not sure I want to live in the town depicted in the film.
Game Night (2018, John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein)
I want to reference another movie in my review but referencing that movie strongly suggests one of its major plot twists. So, um, MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT. It’s funny, though! So see it.
BoJack Horseman (2014)
There’s something about animation that gives TV shows (and some movies) a freedom of tone which is not accessible to live action movies and TV. Something about animated characters lets us humans be more accepting of tonal shifts and sight gags. At least I think so. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered another show more …
Dead Man on Campus (1998, Alan Cohn)
This is a very dumb movie with a very dumb plot which I was apparently very much in the mood for – I was drinking… – but which succeeds as much as it does due to its heavy reliance on jokes and also a very good sense of “Wasn’t college the best?” nostalgia which, having …
Deathtrap (1982, Sidney Lumet)
This is film version of a play, and it’s one of those plays with lots of twists. But, given the its nature, it still feels a lot like a play. And. moreover, I’m not sure it’s as funny as it thinks it is.
The Laundromat (2019, Steven Soderbergh)
This is a bizarre, episodic and extremely stagey attempt to make the Panama Papers scandal more accessible and therefore of greater concern to the average American. It is a giant mess and only sporadic laughs and an excellent cast keep – and the film’s noble intentions – keep me from panning it. SPOILERS
Toast of London (2012)
This is a very, very stupid show about an arrogant and not very good actor and his foibles trying to stay employed in London. But it knows it’s really dumb, and it leans into it fully; it can be very, very funny.
Logan Lucky (2017, Steven Soderbergh)
This is a very enjoyable heist comedy full of quirky performances and fun cameos. It’s a pretty silly film – some have called it a “hill billy” or “red neck” Ocean’s Eleven and the film itself calls it “Ocean’s 7-11” – but it’s pretty funny and manages to also be enjoyable as a heist movie, …
Chimes at Midnight aka Falstaff (1965, Orson Welles)
Like many of Welles’ later films, the strange history of this film is almost as interesting as the movie itself. It’s the kind of saga that makes me want to read a biography of Welles though I think there’s a documentary that just came out, isn’t there? Anyway…
Inherent Vice (2014, Paul Thomas Anderson)
I have never read this book, but I have three of his other novels, and one thing I can say about Thomas Pynchon, is that his novels strike me as unfilmable. There’s so much going on and so much of it isn’t the kind of thing that would work on the screen. I like to …
The Darjeeling Limited (2007, Wes Anderson)
This movie came out when I was still pretty in love with Wes Anderson but, for some reason, I didn’t watch at the time. And then a decade passed and I watched it on a plane three weeks ago.
The 2019 Toronto International Film Festival
Once again I only saw 5 movies this year. As with previous years, the reason for that will become apparent in a month or so. But, as usual, we managed to do a pretty good job picking movies and only saw movie I wouldn’t recommend seeing, which is a pretty good ratio.
Heroic Losers (2019, Sebastián Borensztein)
This is an enjoyable, albeit flawed, heist comedy about a group of townspeople whose dreams of resurrecting their town’s granary are devastated by the “Corralito”, a reaction to a run on the banks during the Argentine Great Depression. It’s hits the standard heist movie beats, but it is refreshing both because of how funny it …
Anna and the Apocalypse (2017, John McPhail)
This movie is a Christmas, Zombie Musical. Yes, you read that right, three genres in one.
Support the Girls (2018, Andrew Bujalski)
This is one of those films which focuses on an eventful day in the lives of the employees of a small business. There are a bunch of these films but for some reason the film we both thought of afterwards was Empire Records, though this is a very different movie (it should go without saying). …
Bullets Over Broadway (1994, Woody Allen)
Obligatory mention: Woody Allen has been accused of sexually assaulting his adopted daughter. He also married the adopted daughter of his former partner. I can completely understand if you want to never watch another Woody Allen film, or read about Woody Allen. Bullets Over Broadway has been on my “To Watch” list for my entire …
Hell Baby (2013, Robert Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon)
This is a really dumb spin on The Exorcist crossed with The Amityville Horror – or some kind of possessed house movie, I haven’t seen that one in a while – but which manages to be pretty funny, all the while being fairly obvious. If you’ve seen Reno 911, it’s basically the same kind of comedy – it’s made …
Caramel aka Sukkar banat (2007, Nadine Labaki)
I saw and basically hated Labaki’s Where Do We Go Now? a number of years ago at TIFF and the moment I found out she made this, my guard went up.
The Nice Guys (2016, Shane Black)
This is pretty hilarious slapstick buddy comedy mashed up with a period film noir set in LA in 1977. I didn’t realize this is the guy who made Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but it was, and if you liked that movie, you’ll no doubt like this.
Keanu (2016, Peter Atencio)
Keanu takes the classic Hollywood trope of fishes-out-water lying about their identities resulting in hijinks and transposes it to the world of LA drug gangs. That is, to my knowledge, a unique take on a very, very tired formula. One significant SPOILER
Hail, Caesar! (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen)
This is a bizarre, borderline directionless film full of too many ideas, some of which are quite good and funny, but too many of which do not appear to be necessary to the story such as it is.
Bull Durham (1988, Ron Shelton)
Somehow, despite growing up a baseball fan, and despite having seen a Tin Cup (which is the baseball Bull Durham, right?), I missed Bull Durham until now. I think I saw a scene sometime in my teens and decided I had watched it so never thought I should.
Blockers (2018, Kay Cannon)
This combination of a female American Pie and female Superbad, with an entirely different, “adults being stupid” film, is pretty funny but has some moments where the Liberal Hollywood propaganda about diversity and female equality are put centre stage, instead.
Butter (2011, Jim Field Smith)
I think I know what the pitch was for this movie: “It’s like Waiting for Guffman or Best in Show but without Christopher Guest’s company and with butter!” If that sounds good to you, well, you’ll still be disappointed.
The Heat (2013, Paul Feig)
hI barely remember seeing trailers for The Heat, which is symptomatic of one of the many problems with Hollywood. Because this movie is pretty damn funny and I feel like I would have seen it sooner, if I had known that.