Archive for the ‘Comedy/Laffs’ Category
Tuesday, January 30th, 2024
Man, what am I doing leaving all these Johnnie To movies unseen? Whenever I watch one I seem to fall in love. Case in point, THROW DOWN (2004). As far as I knew it wasn’t even one of his more popular ones when Criterion released it in 2021, at least not in the U.S. It was just a forgotten Tai Seng DVD from the aughts. But now it is the recipient of the prestigious The Best Thing I’ve Seen Lately award.
Most of To’s movies I’ve seen have been crime movies. They have good action but they’re more notable for their visual beauty and operatic emotion. They usually feel more poetic than badass, though they can be both. THROW DOWN technically has some crime in it, but that’s not the main topic, and to my surprise this is largely a comedy. Not the broad type of humor I associate with Hong Kong cinema, but a very dry, offbeat sort of humor of different characters matter-of-factly following their idiosyncratic pursuits into strange situations and never making a big deal out of it. Never mugging, never underlining. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Kwok, Calvin Choi, Cherrie Ying, Eddie Cheung, Haitao Li, Ho Sai-Man, Johnnie To, judo, Lo Hoi-Pang, Louis Koo, Tony Ka Fai Leung, Yuen Bun
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs, Martial Arts | 18 Comments »
Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024
After THE FAVOURITE gave Yorgos Lanthimos success, acclaim and a game lead actress on a bigger budget than his earlier films, the director aimed those resources at a project he’d been trying to do since 2009: an adaptation of the 1992 novel Poor Things: Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer by Alasdair Gray. While I’ve read that the novel is set in a realistic Victorian London, Lanthimos has turned it into a colorful (and sometimes black-and-white) gothic cartoon world, with shades of Tim Burton and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, maybe a little BABE: PIG IN THE CITY, while retaining his cock-eyed view, dark humor and fascination with chaotic people upending social mores. POOR THINGS was nominated for Oscars for best picture, director, adapted screenplay, actress, supporting actor, makeup, music, costume design, cinematography, editing and production design this morning because they heard I was posting my review today and wanted to try to capitalize on that. I’ll allow it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Emma Stone, Hanna Schygulla, Jerrod Carmichael, Kathryn Hunter, Margaret Qualley, Mark Coulier, Mark Ruffalo, Ramy Youssef, Suzy Bemba, Vicki Pepperdine, Willem Dafoe, Yorgos Lanthimos
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Fantasy/Swords | 47 Comments »
Monday, January 22nd, 2024
Awards Season Catchup Double Feature: ANATOMY OF A FALL and AMERICAN FICTION
There’s a specialized little genre of music I love – modern funk bands doing covers of classic hip hop songs. It’s just a best of both worlds kind of situation, combining my two favorite types of music, and bringing things full circle in a way. So much of hip hop comes from curating and collaging the best parts of old funk songs, and now we’ve got new funk bands curating the best hip hop songs and filtering the sound through their instruments. Many of them also have a working knowledge of the sampled works, covering them as well or mixing them with a song that sampled them. That happens on the two albums of Wu-Tang Clan covers by El Michels Affair, as well as Brownout’s Public Enemy tribute Fear of a Brown Planet. I also have this record called Expansions by the German group Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band where they cover Jay-Z’s “Dirt Off Your Shoulder,” but also “Space,” Galt MacDermot’s song famously sampled in “Woo Ha” by Busta Rhymes. And they play them with steel drums! So I immediately recognized their cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” when it started playing at the beginning of the Palme d’or winning French legal drama ANATOMY OF A FALL (Anatomie d’une chute), and I was surprised. I was even more surprised when it turned out to be an important part of the story, played about as much as “Fight the Power” is in DO THE RIGHT THING. Wouldn’t have guessed that in a million years, even with hints. I hope they play it every time it’s up for anything at the Oscars or any of those. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Brody, Antoine Reinarts, Arthur Harari, Camille Rutherford, Cord Jefferson, court room drama, Erika Alexander, Issa Rae, Jeffrey Wright, Jehnny Beth, John Ortiz, Justine Triet, Laura Karpman, Leslie Uggams, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Sandra Huller, Sterling K. Brown, Swann Arlaud, Tracee Ellis Ross
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Drama | 5 Comments »
Monday, December 18th, 2023
I swear for weeks I knew Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore were getting acclaim for a movie called MAY DECEMBER, and I assumed it was about them falling in love. I was pretty thrown off when I learned it was in fact a story inspired by Mary Kay Letourneau, a teacher who in the late ‘90s went to prison for second-degree child rape of one of her sixth grade students, insisted he was her soulmate, gave birth to two of his daughters while incarcerated, then got out and had a 14 year marriage with him. It’s an infamous story worldwide, but especially in the Seattle area, since it happened here. It brings out all the dumb radio call-in show takes about “heh heh, that’s what most boys want ‘Hot For Teacher,’ right?” but of course it is complicated by his choice to stay with her after he became an adult.
In this film directed by Todd Haynes (FAR FROM HEAVEN, CAROL) from a screenplay by Samy Burch (COYOTE VS. ACME), story by Burch and her husband Alex Mechanik, something similar happened in Savannah, Georgia. Moore (NEXT) plays Gracie Atherton-Yoo, ex-convict and tabloid mainstay, now married to grown up Joe (Charles Melton, BAD BOYS FOR LIFE). She has a baking business and lots of friends, their oldest daughter Honor (Piper Curda, THE WRETCHED) is away at college, twins Charlie (Gabriel Chung) and Mary (Elizabeth Yu) are about to graduate high school. Portman (PRIDE + PREJUDICE + ZOMBIES [producer only]) plays Elizabeth Berry, a famous TV actress in town to spend time with the family as preparation for playing Gracie in a movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Mechanik, Charles Melton, Cory Michael Smith, D.W. Moffett, Drew Scheid, Elizabeth Yu, Gabriel Chung, Julianne Moore, Marcelo Zarvos, Michel Legrand, Natalie Portman, Netflix, Piper Curda, Samy Burch, Todd Haynes
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Drama | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, November 7th, 2023
BABY ASSASSINS is a 2021 Japanese film that I really enjoyed on Hi-Yah! a while ago and it has a sequel coming out soon (it already played at Fantastic Fest), so I figured I better get off my ass and finish writing the review. This is a movie that has some really well-executed fighting and bloody violence, but it’s really not focused on action. It’s mostly a very dry comedy about the lives of two freshly-graduated-from-high-school roommates, Mahiro (Saori Izawa, stunt double in the last two RUROUNI KENSHINs and SNAKE EYES) and Chisato (Akari Takaishi, MY HAPPY MARRIAGE), whose “main job is killing.”
The movie opens in the back room of a convenience store, where Mahiro is badly interviewing for a job, which turns out to be an undercover mission to kill the manager. She shoots him and fights the rest of the staff on her way out, until Chisato shows up to help finish them off and joke about how annoying the manager was. Just a couple of friends getting through life together.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Akari Takaishi, Akitani Mone, Kensuke Sonomura, Masanori Mimoto, Saori Izawa, Satoshi Uekiya, Yasukaze Motomiya, Yugo Sakamoto
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs | 2 Comments »
Monday, October 30th, 2023
I enjoy the work of director Jeremy Saulnier. He did the bleak, regular-dude-sloppily-getting-revenge movie BLUE RUIN in 2013, followed by the punks vs. bigots favorite GREEN ROOM in 2015, and then he kind of went off the radar because HOLD THE DARK (2018) only exists in the mists of Netflix, but I liked that one too.
Those three movies paint a certain picture of what kind of filmmaker Saulnier might be. They may have moments of humor, but they’re all very grim and dry, the emphasis on their unblinking look into the dark fringes of life, with a particular fascination for people not too cool to step into enormous fuck ups and messes that movie characters usually don’t. In BLUE RUIN, for example, the protagonist steals a gun to use in a murder, but it has a lock on it, so he tries to break it off with a rock, and breaks the gun. In HOLD THE DARK a guy shoots at cops from a barn with a high powered rifle and they just scurry around helplessly for several minutes until our protagonist gets a gun and takes careful aim… and then he can’t hit him either.
What I think is fairly unknown or forgotten about Saulnier is that his first film, a whole six years before the wide acclaim of BLUE RUIN, presents that view of life in the context of a straight-up horror comedy. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Beau Sia, Bill Tangradi, Chris Sharp, Halloween, Jeremy Saulnier, Macon Blair, Paul Goldblatt, Stacy Rock
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 9 Comments »
Thursday, September 21st, 2023
Yesterday when I reviewed LOVE AND MONSTERS I mentioned how much I enjoy the work of screenwriter Brian Duffield (JANE GOT A GUN, THE BABYSITTER, UNDERWATER), but I strategically avoided mentioning his directorial debut that came out just two weeks before LOVE AND MONSTERS, because I wanted to save that topic for today. SPONTANEOUS (2020) is another one that combines young romance and coming-of-age with a genre premise, and has some accidental pandemic parallels. It’s more of a teen movie than a sci-fi one, but it’s R-rated for “bloody images throughout.” Adapted from a 2016 book by Aaron Starmer, it follows its witty, acerbic protagonist Mara (Katherine Langford, KNIVES OUT) as she navigates a senior year punctuated by dozens of her classmates randomly exploding.
“What? Like a bomb?” asks her best friend Tess (Hayley Law, Riverdale) after the first one, Katelyn Ogden.
“No. Like… a balloon?” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian Duffield, Charlie Plummer, Hayley Law, Katherine Langford, Piper Perabo, Rob Huebel
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Romance, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 18 Comments »
Wednesday, September 20th, 2023
LOVE AND MONSTERS is pretty much what the title says – the story of a lovestruck young man in a world of monsters. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic California, after 95% of the world’s population of humans has died off and the survivors live in small colonies hiding from giant bugs and reptiles. The filmmakers are wise enough to know that explaining that too thoroughly is for assholes, so it gets brushed over in a couple minutes of introductory narration from our protagonist, Joel (Dylan O’Brien, AMERICAN ASSASSIN). Something about an asteroid that we shot with missiles but then the missiles rained chemicals down that mutated cold blooded creatures. The after effects are depicted in news footage, Joel’s drawings, plus some clippings, such as the front page newspaper story “WHITE HOUSE IN CRISIS: PRESIDENT KILLED BY GIANT MOTH.”
When the shit pops off in his home town of Fairfield, Joel is at the make out spot, just crawling into the back seat with his adorable girlfriend Aimee (Jessica Henwick, “Bugs” from THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS). Tragic and also convenient for us to get a wide shot of the chaos. The two have to hurriedly say goodbye before Joel evacuates with his parents (Andrew Buchanan [DRIVE HARD] and Tandi Wright [PEARL]). The pain of teen romance cut short by a move (in this case due to monster attacks rather than starting college or a parent having a career change) is palpable. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Buchanan, Ariana Greenblatt, Brian Duffield, Bruce Spence, Dan Ewing, Dylan O'Brien, Ellen Hollman, Jessica Henwick, Matthew Robinson, Melanie Zanetti, Michael Matthews, Michael Rooker, post-apocalypse, Tandi Wright, Tre Hale
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Monster, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 11 Comments »
Monday, September 18th, 2023
OPERATION FORTUNE: RUSE DE GUERRE is the first of two Guy Ritchie films released in 2023. They came out so close together because this one was delayed more than a year for reasons reportedly including the pandemic, the bad luck of featuring Ukrainian gangsters right when Ukraine was invaded, and restructuring of distributor STX. I swear I heard it was going straight to video at one point, but then it suddenly hit theaters pretty much out of the blue, with predictably poor response.
It’s another Ritchie-Statham collab (their fifth), but not a gangster movie. Instead it’s a light-hearted spy caper, not an all-out comedy, but very jokey. It’s got the usual spy stuff: planting trackers, facial recognition software, meeting with buyers, pulling people into vans. And their mission takes them into the world of the super-duper rich, on yachts, in mansions, private jets, charity parties, bodyguards, art collections, jewelry auctions. A team of crafty good guys have to earn the trust of billionaire arms dealer Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant, CLOUD ATLAS) before he sells a dangerous device called The Handle. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aubrey Plaza, Bugzy Malone, Carey Elwes, Eddie Marsan, Guy Ritchie, Hugh Grant, Jason Statham, Josh Hartnett, Lourdes Faberes, Max Beesley, Peter Ferdinando, spy
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs | 26 Comments »
Thursday, September 14th, 2023
(disclaimer: Netflix continues to suck and needs to stop holding the American movie industry hostage by clinging to a clearly unsustainable exploitation-based business model. Also they have some good movies on there.)
I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE (2017) is a darkly comedic crime tale in a subgenre I would maybe describe as suburban pulp. A very ordinary, relatable protagonist falls victim to a very ordinary crime (burglary) and, compounded with the other indignities of her life (like some motherfucker always letting his dog shit on her lawn, even with a sign specifically saying not to do that), it pushes her past her usual timid boundaries into seeking some sense of justice. That gives her a peek into an underworld of corruption and depravity on the fringes of her town (filmed in and/or around Portland, Oregon). Nothing big time – just some rich assholes and some meth head weirdos, but certainly outside of her previous experience.
Melanie Lynskey (THE FRIGHTENERS) plays Ruth – single, depressed, put upon nursing assistant. The grimness of her existence is well summed up by the title as well as the first few minutes of the movie. It’s a series of illustrations of the overwhelming shittiness of modern living, most of them relatable, but also a pretty outrageous one where an elderly patient is watching cable news and growls just about the most obscenely racist thing you can imagine, then immediately dies. Later, her grieving son asks if there were any last words. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christine Woods, David Yow, Devon Graye, Elijah Wood, Gary Anthony Williams, Jane Levy, Lee Eddy, Macon Blair, Matt Orduna, Melanie Lynskey, Netflix, Portland, Robert Longstreet, Sundance Jury Prize
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Crime | 6 Comments »
