Archive for the ‘Comedy/Laffs’ Category
Wednesday, February 26th, 2020
IN FABRIC is a unique little movie – a horror film that’s not exactly serious, but not adverse to making its absurd premise work; a comedy too, but dry as freshly folded laundry. It’s primarily an exercise in style, a period piece exalting the golden era of Italian horror with its slender beauties and very good retro score – more proggy than the synthy stuff everybody is doing now – by somebody called “Cavern of Anti-Matter.” It fetishizes retail fashion, taking place in and around the women’s department at a ritzy London department store, frequently featuring montages of (and a nightmare about) catalog models, having its characters repeatedly make small talk about “the sales,” and whether each other found anything good to buy. And of course mannequins. Lots of mannequins the look like people and people that look like mannequins.
And it’s about a killer dress. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Fatma Mohamed, Leo Bill, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Peter Strickland, Richard Bremmer, Susanna Cappellaro
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews | 8 Comments »
Monday, February 10th, 2020
TIGER ON BEAT is a 1988 Chow Yun Fat cop movie that’s not an untouchable masterpiece like HARD BOILED, but a goofy ‘80s time capsule sort of in the tradition of Hollywood buddy cop action comedies of the era. It opens and closes with an appropriately cheesy hard rock theme song.
Chow’s character Francis Li is that type of cop we’re supposed to be charmed by for his careless attitude (until he gets serious about a case) and his relentless hitting on every woman he meets.
We first meet him in bed with a woman, their ankles handcuffed together, when her husband gets home. Somehow he convinces the husband that he’s a good samaritan doing CPR on her as a favor to him while he goes out drinking. Because he’s this smooth-talking, crazy-lying guy I thought for a minute it was gonna be his BEVERLY HILLS COP. There’s even a pretty great synth tune, but unfortunately it doesn’t turn out to be as prevalent in the movie as “Axel F. Theme” was. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chow Yun Fat, Conan Lee, Gordon Liu, Lau Kar-Leung, Nina Li Chi, Phillip Ko, Ti Lung
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 13 Comments »
Tuesday, February 4th, 2020
Shortly after Taika Waititi’s JOJO RABBIT was nominated for best picture I started to see people cast aspersions. Before that I had mostly heard that it was only okay. And that was kind of what I expected, because I first knew Waititi from WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS, and that’s one of those movies that I saw and thought was pretty funny but when five years passed and people were still talking about it like it was the first time they fell in love I couldn’t relate.
That was a stupid thing to get hung up on. Since then Waititi had become better known for injecting the THOR series with life, color and humor, and more importantly he’d made THE HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE. I loved that movie, and JOJO is in a similar vein: a funny, clever story with deep emotions bubbling up from beneath its quirky surface. Which admittedly feels weird to say, because it’s about, uh, Nazi Germany.
Johannes (Roman Griffin Davis, his first movie) and his friend Yorki (Archie Yates, UNTITLED HOME ALONE REBOOT) are enthusiastic participants at a sort of MOONRISE-KINGDOM-looking Hitler Youth summer camp. They’re big nerds taking great pride in learning all the normal boy scout camping shit, and they look like they could be in a live action Peanuts movie, but they’ve also been convinced it’s their patriotic duty to spout all the nonsense they’ve been taught about Nazis being the good guys and Jews being monsters. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Nazis, Rebel Wilson, Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson, Stephen Merchant, Taika Waititi
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 14 Comments »
Tuesday, January 28th, 2020
Everybody has that list of the movies they know they should’ve seen but just haven’t yet for some reason. For me right now it includes BARRY LYNDON, THE DEER HUNTER, the ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA series, KUNDUN, MASTER AND COMMANDER, THE INSIDER, and others. But it no longer includes TAMMY AND THE T-REX. Progress.
TAMMY is a movie from 1994 that I was vaguely aware of as a cheesy family comedy only released on VHS. I definitely confused it with THEODORE REX at times, but I knew it had young Denise Richards (her first starring role) and Paul Walker (his third movie, after MONSTER IN THE CLOSET and PROGRAMMED TO KILL) and was supposed to be pretty crazy. Then last year there was an important new development in film scholarship: somebody discovered a print of a “gory cut” of TAMMY. Turns out before it was released straight to video it was edited down from a very R-rated horror comedy (both terms used loosely). So it played Fantastic Fest and Vinegar Syndrome released a beautiful Blu-Ray special edition and now it’s playing on Shudder. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Denise Richards, Paul Walker, Sean Whalen, Stewart Raffill, Terry Kiser, Theo Forsett, Vinegar Syndrome
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews | 23 Comments »
Thursday, January 23rd, 2020
THE ART OF SELF-DEFENSE is an odd little indie comedy about karate. I wondered if it would be too similar to THE FOOT FIST WAY, the early Danny McBride movie that jibed so well with my sense of humor that when I first rented it I watched it two times in a row. Come to think of it, this movie’s sensei (Alessandro Nivola, AMERICAN HUSTLE) has a philosophy of punching like a kick and kicking like a punch, whatever that means, and that could be called a “foot fist way.” But this is a very different movie. The humor is very dry, the dialogue seems precise as opposed to improvised, and the protagonist is a timid nerd who transforms rather than a blowhard who is just a total asshole from the beginning.
The timid nerd is Casey Davies (Jesse Eisenberg, CURSED), an awkward accountant for an unnamed company. The bros in the break room don’t appreciate him trying to join their conversations, his best friend is his dachshund, and he gets stomped by random motorcyclists while trying to buy dog food. I love the slightly surreal touches that convey his loneliness: the news report that describes him as “a 35 year old dog owner,” the robotic answering machine voice that says “you have only 1 message.” (Though not obviously tied to a specific time period, it’s one with audio cassettes, fat-ass analog TVs and large camcorders with carrying bags.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alessandro Nivola, Imogen Poots, Jesse Eisenberg, karate, Riley Stearns
Posted in Comedy/Laffs | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, December 24th, 2019
Last Christmas I gave you my heart, by which I mean I finally watched JACK FROST and wrote about it. This year, I wouldn’t say I was in tears, but JACK FROST 2: REVENGE OF THE MUTANT KILLER SNOWMAN wasn’t as special.
I mean… they tried. Writer/director Michael Cooney returned in the year 2000 (three years after the original) with another scrappy low budget bag of silliness. This one does not have a fancy Vinegar Syndrome special edition, because it was shot in shiny ugly digital video, so what would be the point? There are a couple obvious stock footage shots and I thought “Oh, that’s what a real movie looks like.” On his commentary track (respect for including that), Cooney says he hopes people don’t notice that the stock footage looks different. Whoops. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chip Heller, Christmas, Christmas horror, Christopher Allport, David Allen Brooks, DTV, Eileen Seeley, Ian Abercrombie, lenticular cover, Marsha Clark, Michael Cooney, Scott MacDonald, Tai Bennett
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews | 16 Comments »
Thursday, December 19th, 2019
About 12 miles and 48 years from ONCE UPON A TIME …IN HOLLYWOOD lies ONCE UPON A TIME IN VENICE. In this 2017 DTV joint, Bruce Willis is the center of a sunny, quirky, comedic crime tale ensemble. Though the story is narrated by his dorky new assistant John (Thomas Middleditch, THE KINGS OF SUMMER), it revolves around Bruce’s low-life private eye Steve Ford. As you do in these movies, a pan through his office shows us some of his history through the medium of props. For example, some photos and a surfboard tell us he’s a surfer. There’s one touch that made me laugh, but maybe wasn’t supposed to: we learn he’s a disgraced ex-cop from an article that calls him “disgraced” in the headline. Why would he frame that and put it on his wall? It’s not even an important piece of exposition.
Anyway, Steve has two small time cases:
1. Find a missing woman named Nola (Jessica Gomes, “KSI Spokesmodel,” TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION)
2. Find the graffiti artist painting obscene murals of real estate developer Lou the Jew (Adam Goldberg, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, voice of Flealick in BABE: PIG IN THE CITY) on his buildings (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Goldberg, Adrian Martinez, Bruce, Bruce Willis, Christopher McDonald, David Arquette, Emily Robinson, Famke Janssen, Jason Momoa, Jessica Gomes, John Goodman, Kal Penn, Kaleti Williams, Mark Cullen, Myles Humphus, Robb Cullen, Ron Funches, skateboards, Stuart F. Wilson, Thomas Middleditch, Tyga, Wood Harris
Posted in Bruce, Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Reviews | 2 Comments »
Thursday, December 5th, 2019
BLOOD PARADISE is a 2018 independent horror film that was released in July by Artsploitation on disc and digital – they must’ve sent it to me because I was on their list from reviewing RONDO. Like that one it’s a low budget movie from some hard working unknowns, but it gets huge mileage out of a great cast, some good cinematography and nice scenery. It’s simple, but it’s slick and has a distinct oddness and humor, and it’s over in 84 minutes without feeling rushed. Not bad.
Robin Richards (Andréa Winter) is a rich and world famous author of what I gather to be the type of novels that sell alot of hard cover copies at airports. But the latest in her once popular Blood Paradise series is a flop, so her agent convinces her to go on a retreat. Why not stop all this laying around in the sun at her picturesque Italian villa when she could rent a small cottage on a farm in Sweden and get started on the next book?
The accommodations turn out to be less than luxurious, and she’s not the kind of person who enjoys seeing farm animals slaughtered outside her window. As if that’s not bad enough, it quickly becomes clear that she’s surrounded by potential creepos. Whether they are just weird or worthy of fearing remains to be seen. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrea Winter, Christer Cavallius, Patrick von Barkenberg, Sweden
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, December 4th, 2019
This is a rare one for me: I saw PARASITE having no clue what it was about at all. Completely fresh. I saw the trailer 1 (one) time and didn’t understand what was going on. But I liked the three movies I’ve seen by director Bong Joon-ho (SNOWPIERCER) enough to just take the hype at its word and go see it. And since two of those movies (THE HOST and OKJA) are strange creature movies I honestly didn’t even know if the title was a metaphor or if there was also going to be an actual parasitic monster at some point.
Anyway it’s not a huge surprise twist movie or anything, but I enjoyed the lack of expectations. So I guess only read this if you’ve seen it or don’t care about that. (contains spoilers, mostly vague.)
It’s the story of the Kim family – father Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho, THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD), mother Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin), son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik, TRAIN TO BUSAN) and daughter Ki-jeong (Park So-dam, THE SILENCED) – who seem to take economic struggle in stride. They live together in a cluttered basement infested by stink bugs, with a window facing an alley where they often see a drunk guy peeing. In the opening scene they discover that their neighbor added a password to her wi-fi, but they can connect to a nearby cafe if they crawl into the top corner of the apartment on the raised platform with the toilet. Which is important because they need WhatsApp to communicate with the young manager of Pizza Generation (Jung Yi-seo) who pays them to fold boxes. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bong Joon-ho, Choi Woo-shik, Korean cinema, Song Kang-ho
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews | 62 Comments »
Monday, December 2nd, 2019
I was a Rian Johnson skeptic for years. I can’t deny it. I recognized BRICK as original and well directed, but couldn’t swallow its stylized world of teen noir (“in my day a dude walking around with a duck cane was in for a serious ass beating, he would not be running a drug empire,” I wrote), skipped the second one because I thought it was gonna be bootleg Wes Anderson, liked LOOPER but recoiled at people talking like it was the Second Coming (“I feel a little out of step here. I mean I like it, but I don’t want to fuck it”), and this may be out of line but I have always thought his credits should read “Written and directed by Rian [sic] Johnson.”
Then STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI came along – a movie I didn’t think he was qualified to direct, but it turned out to be so much better than I expected, and so reinvigorating to a trilogy I thought was going in an emptier, more obvious direction. All the sudden I wanted to hear everything the guy had to say, listened to interviews, started spelling “Ryan Coogler” as “Rian Coogler,” and even considered maybe seeing THE BROTHERS BLOOM some day.
So I was much more open-minded for his new laughdunit mysteryblast KNIVES OUT, which sure enough is a fun time for all without anything that felt too corny, forced or self conscious for me. Only in the last shot did I think “oh, this is kind of Wes Andersony.” And by then it wasn’t gonna bother me much. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ana de Armas, Chris Evans, Christopher Plummer, Daniel Craig, Don Johnson, Frank Oz, Jamie Lee Curtis, Katherine Langford, LaKeith Stanfield, M. Emmett Walsh, Michael Shannon, Noah Segan, Rian Johnson, Toni Collette
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Mystery, Reviews | 44 Comments »
