Comedy

Description: ALL Don Anselmo wants is a motorized wheelchair. The problem is that there’s nothing wrong with his legs, and his prosperous but parsimonious son, the lawyer, refuses to indulge him. The drastic steps the old fellow takes to stop walking and start riding constitute the plot of ”El Cochecito” (”The Little Coach”), Marco Ferreri’s 1960 movie, which is having its American premiere at Film

Mr. Ferreri is best known for ”La Grande Bouffe,” a satire about Franco’s Spain in which several gourmands dine themselves to death. ”El Cochecito,” too, has its satiric edge -almost everybody, even likable Anselmo, is utterly self-centered; when Anselmo goes out of his way to reunite a pair of young lovers, it’s an aberration. You’ll need patience, but as the little tale develops, the movie offers a quirkily rueful look at the loneliness and longings of age.Read More »

Plot Synopsis by Paul Brenner
Attempting to Americanize Greta Garbo to appeal to American audiences (since most of the foreign markets for Hollywood product had been cut off due to World War II), M.G.M.’s Two-Faced Woman succeeded in making Garbo angry enough to announce her retirement from the screen. Two-Faced Woman was Garbo’s final screen appearance, as the legendary actress slipped into a reclusive existence that lasted until her death. This George Cukor romantic comedy casts Garbo as ski instructor Karin Borg Blake. She gives lessons to wealthy American playboy Larry Blake (Melvyn Douglas), and the two fall in love and marry even though Larry has a girlfriend named Griselda Vaughn (Constance Bennett) waiting for him back in New York. Returning to New York, Karin fears that Griselda will win Larry back. In an effort to foil Larry’s imagined dalliance, Karin poses as her own twin sister, Katherine, hoping to get Larry to fall in love with her instead of Griselda. Larry is onto the scheme and plays along with her, pretending to fall in love with Katherine. But this infuriates Karin, who can’t believe that her husband would fall in love with her sister, and she storms back to her ski resort..
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Trapped in a seedy LA apartment, Franklin Franklin (Matt Lucas) has a dead landlord on the kitchen floor and is surrounded by eccentric neighbors: the stoner (Johnny Knoxville) and girlfriend (Rebel Wilson), the wanna-be stripper (Juno Temple) and the artist (James Caan). To add to his chaos, a drunk investigator (Billy Crystal) is questioning him about his landlord. But none of this fazes Franklin. He dreams of Switzerland, and waits each day for an envelope from his institutionalized brother (James Marsden). Then, one day the envelope doesn’t come and Franklin becomes unhinged. Little does he know…his crazy brother has the secret that will set him free.Read More »

by Bill Gibron:
There was a time, a little less than four decades ago, when Neil Simon was the literary benchmark of both Broadway and the Silver Screen. After a successful stint as a TV scribe on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, the soon to be phenomenon went on to create such Great White Way staples as Barefoot in the Park, Sweet Charity, Plaza Suite, and The Prisoner of Second Avenue. In 1966, he had four shows running at once and it wasn’t long before Hollywood came calling.

After adapting his Come Blow Your Horn and Park for the big screen, Simon was given the complicated task of translating his mega-hit The Odd Couple as a movie. While the studios would accept Oscar- and Tony-winner Walter Matthau as Oscar, Art Carney’s cinematic clout as Felix was questioned. Luckily, director Gene Saks hired friend and Fortune Cookie co-star Jack Lemmon as the notorious neat freak. The rest, as they say, is motion picture history.Read More »

Plot: Elyot and Sibyl are being married in a big church ceremony. Amanda and Victor are being married by a French Justice of the Peace. Both couples go to a hotel on the same day and are put in adjoining rooms with adjoining terraces. Things go fine until Amanda sees her former husband Elyot on the adjacent terrace. While they both pretend to be happy, both make plans to leave, but their spouses do not want to leave as it is their respective honeymoons. So the other spouses each go down to the bar. This leaves Elyot and Amanda together and they reminisce. Before long, the sparks again fly and they both decide to leave together to the Mountains of Switzerland. They love, they bicker, they fight, they stop. Then it begins over and over. Then Victor and Sibyl show up at their chalet. Written by Tony Fontana Read More »

Plot Synopsis [AMG]
The last—and to some aficionados, the best—of choreographer Busby Berkeley’s three Warner Bros. efforts of 1933, Footlight Parade stars James Cagney as a Broadway musical comedy producer. Cagney is unceremoniously put out of business when talking pictures arrive. To keep his head above water, Jimmy hits upon a swell idea: he’ll stage musical “prologues” for movie theatres, then ship them out to the various picture palaces in New York. Halfway through the picture, Cagney is obliged to assemble three mammoth prologues and present them back-to-back in three different theatres. There are all sorts of backstage intrigues, not the least of which concerns the predatory hijinks of gold-digger Claire Dodd and the covetous misbehavior of Cagney’s ex-wife Renee Whitney. Joan Blondell plays Jimmy’s faithful girl-friday, who loves him from afar; Ruby Keeler is the secretary who takes off her glasses and is instantly transformed into a glamorous stage star; Dick Powell is the “protege” of wealthy Ruth Donnelly, who makes good despite this handicap; Frank McHugh is Cagney’s assistant, who spends all his time moaning “It’ll never work”; and Hugh Herbert is a self-righteous censor, who ends up in a censurable position. The last half-hour of Footlight Parade is a nonstop display of Busby Berkeley at his most spectacular: the three big production numbers, all written by Harry Warren and Al Dubin, are “By a Waterfall”, “Honeymoon Hotel”, and “Shanghai Lil”, the latter featuring some delicious pre-code scatology, a tap-dance duet by Cagney and Keeler, and an out-of-left-field climactic salute to FDR and the NRA!Read More »

Thomas P. Manning, businessman and chess expert, mysteriously shot in a locked room, dies clutching some chess pieces. Police are baffled, and finally abandon the case. Six months later, victim’s daughter Leah Manning, stung by a scurrilous book about the case, enlists the aid of Charlie Chan and Number 3 Son. Additional murders follow, leading to a climactic confrontation in a seemingly deserted “Fun House.” Written by Rod Crawford (IMDB)Read More »

Porn store owner Pete orders some new stuff from his supplier Niko but Niko mixes up the address with the address of the local Barclays Bank. Here, newly-weds David (the bank’s assistant manager) and Penny Hunter is shocked when first photos, then films and then finally two girls are sent to them in the Bank’s flat. They, and their friend, head cashier Brian Runnicles (who slowly starts to have a nervous breakdown), have to deal with getting rid of the porn without letting their boss, Mr. Bromley – the bank’s manager (who’s very anti-porn), the local police in the form of Inspector Paul, and David’s mother, Bertha Hunter, in on what is happening…Read More »

Plot:
Episodic misadventures of people living in an isolated Czech holiday village. One man is collecting anything that is a bargain, including only shoes for the left leg (cheaper than buying them in a pair) while another enjoys watching TV with a goat in his coach. When hunters of one association shoot a boar in a school, an argument explodes because the school lies on the territory of another association of hunters. The school teacher, however, manages to reach a compromise: divide the boar meat between the two hunter camps. However, during dinner, the hunters again start a quarrel.Read More »