Tag: comedy
-
Trading Places: The prince’s nurture vs. the pauper’s nature
John Landis’ Trading Places is remarkably unafraid to take a cold hard look at racism, privilege, and inequality. It still retains the power to incite gasps and raise eyebrows, decades after release. With two major caveats, Trading Places is one of my personal favorite comedies. Caveat one: for a movie with guts enough to deal […]
-
Monty Python throws a farewell party for themselves in “Live (Mostly): One Down, Four to Go”
Like many misfit American kids of my generation, my brain was permanently rewired when I discovered the BBC series Monty Python’s Flying Circus on PBS in the 1980s. Monty Python, Doctor Who, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy formed a triumvirate of British pop culture that gave dorky anglophiles like us a pool of […]
-
This is 40 was made by comedians, for comedians
Because you demanded it: a sequel to Knocked Up! Oh wait, you didn’t? Neither did I. Even as an admitted “dramedy”, Judd Apatow’s This is 40 is a major bummer. Laugh and cry as you watch a couple deal with the same problems ordinary people can relate to: what to do with their rewarding jobs, […]
-
Planes, Trains and Automobiles is astonishingly unfunny
I’ve been catching up on my John Landis, for better or for worse. Trading Places and Coming to America are both much better than I remembered, and I’m glad I revisited them. But Planes, Trains and Automobiles is just astonishingly unfunny. A slapdash production, clearly banking solely on the presumed charm and appeal of its […]
-
The Time Has Come to Act: Stanley Tucci’s The Impostors
I’m not blind to its shortcomings, but The Impostors is one of my most favorite movie comfort foods. That I find it so funny and purely enjoyable is really saying something, considering its milieu is the joblessness, desperation, and looming international conflict of The Great Depression. The pitch: a loving homage to old-school Hollywood screwball […]
-
Sally Hawkins Finds a New Opportunity in Every Setback in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky
Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is a creature rarely encountered in movies and even less often in real life: someone genuinely happy. She’s not bothered by others’ life goals; at 30, she doesn’t have a baby or a boyfriend, own a house, or know how to drive, and none of these concerns are cause for existential angst. […]
-
On the Run from Johnny Law in Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket
Wes Anderson and co-writer Owen Wilson’s feature debut Bottle Rocket is based on their 1992 short film of the same name. Like Kevin Smith’s Clerks and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, Bottle Rocket may not have turned the world upside down, but is now viewed as a key filmmaker’s ur text. His signature style is already […]
-
All life’s a play in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York
Whether it actually is or not, Synecdoche, New York has the feel of a very, very personal work of art. I know next to nothing about writer/director Charlie Kaufman’s personal life, and don’t even necessarily feel like I do now. Then again, few people do know Kaufman, as he has famously managed to sidestep much […]
-
The Coen Brothers confound expectations, as usual, with Burn After Reading
Although every Coen Brothers film is unmistakably theirs alone (can the Auteur Theory apply to more than one person at once?), Joel and Ethan have a reputation for rarely making the films audiences want or expect from them at any given time. After Fargo, when everybody wanted another snowy midwestern noir, Joel and Ethan gave […]
-
The Dude burns one on the way over in The Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski
In 1998, when all the world wanted from Joel Coen and Ethan Coen was another Fargo, they got The Big Lebowski instead. The Coen Brothers recently repeated this trick by following up another masterpiece, No Country for Old Men, with the happy-go-lucky Burn After Reading. This blog wonders if this compulsion is by design or […]