Comedy

  • Giorgos Lanthimos & Lakis Lazopoulos – O kalyteros mou filos AKA My Best Friend (2001)

    2001-2010ComedyGiorgos LanthimosGiorgos Lanthimos and Lakis LazopoulosGreece

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    Description: When Konstadinos misses a flight and returns home unexpectedly, he finds his wife in bed with his best friend. Shocked, he leaves the house without letting them know what he saw and begins wandering in the streets of Athens… Read More »

  • Jan Nemec – Mucedníci lásky aka Martyrs of Love (1966)

    1961-1970ComedyCzech RepublicExperimentalJan Nemec

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    Another brilliant outing from Czech New Wave master Jan Nemec, director of Diamonds of the Night and The Party and the Guests.

    Martyrs of Love is in 3 distinct sections, separated by title cards, connected thematically and formally rather than concretely. Music is probably the most important connection, as all three sections have prominent musical events.Read More »

  • Wes Anderson – The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

    2011-2020ComedyUSAWes Anderson

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    Quote:
    “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is the movie that Wes Anderson has been hinting at and promising for 15 years. It has wit and yet doesn’t short-circuit emotion, style that’s more than a gesture or attitude, and good scenes that don’t only stand alone but that build and become part of a substantial whole. It is every bit what people think of when they think of a Wes Anderson movie, only this time the gap between the talent and the achievement is gone.

    It’s set primarily in the early 1930s, in a fictional central European city, with shades of Budapest, Prague and Vienna – but not the real Budapest, Prague and Vienna, but rather those cities as imagined and dreamed across a distance of time and space. The hotel of the title is like a hotel in a Greta Garbo movie, except rendered in candy colors, harking back to a time when people really believed that splendor and refinement were states of the soul, not mere acts of display.Read More »

  • Bruce La Bruce – Gerontophilia (2013)

    2011-2020Bruce LaBruceCanadaComedyRomance

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    Lake is an unusual boy: he is a young man with an old soul who discovers he has an odd fixation on the elderly. Realizing that some day, if fate allows, he will be one himself, he is particularly fascinated by old men. He imagines their age to be a beautiful thing and recognizes how these men were once young and vibrant and attractive, as he is now. Although Lake has a girlfriend his own age, named Desiree, he wonders sometimes if his fixation on old men is unnatural and unhealthy – perhaps even sexual. When his mother, who is a nurse, takes on a management job at an old folks home, Lake jumps at her offer of a summer job as an orderly there. Gradually, Lake comes to discover that the old people in the institution are being given psychotropic drugs to keep them in a catatonic state. Lake befriends one old man in particular, Mr. Peabody, who still seems to have some fight left in him. They begin to form a strong bond. Mr. Peabody charms Lake with romantic stories of his youth and …Read More »

  • Eric Rohmer – Les rendez-vous de Paris (1995)

    1991-2000ComedyDramaEric RohmerFrance

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    Les Rendez-vous de Paris [Rendez-vous in Paris] is a 1995 portmanteau French film directed by Éric Rohmer.

    Three loosely connected variations on the theme of the lover’s rendezvous in Paris. The three episodes are titled “Le Rendez-vous de 7 heures” (The Rendezvous of 7 hours), in which a student discovers her boyfriend is two-timing her, “Les Bancs de Paris” (The Benches of Paris), in which an unnamed woman has a series of meetings in parks with a handsome literature teacher from the suburbs, and “Mere et enfant 1907” (Mother and Child 1907), which takes its title from a Picasso painting, and centres on an artist who is attracted by a stranger. The three stories of the film are linked by a girl singing in the streets to an accordion accompaniment – a homage to René Clair’s Sous les toits de Paris.
    Read More »

  • Oldrich Lipský – Tajemství hradu v Karpatech AKA The Mysterious Castle In The Carpathians (1981)

    1981-1990ComedyCzech RepublicOldrich LipskySci-Fi

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    Synopsis:
    In the 1800s, a baron, who is the owner of a castle known as The Devil’s Castle and who is also an obsessed opera fan, keeps the body of his favorite diva preserved in a crypt in the castle. In order to keep away potentially nosy visitors, the baron’s mad-scientist assistant, invents all sorts of spooky phenomena in order to give the castle a creepy reputation.Read More »

  • Jack Arnold – Games Girls Play AKA The Bunny Caper AKA Sex Play (1974)

    1971-1980CampComedyJack ArnoldUnited Kingdom

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    Quote:
    Sultry ’70s B-movie bombshell Christina Hart (THE STEWARDESSES, HELTER SKELTER) stars as Bunny O’Hara, the underage man-eating daughter of a wealthy American businessman. After sleeping her way through the brass ranks of the U.S. military, Bunny is packed off to Swinging London and a remote finishing school for wayward rich girls.

    Bored in the British boondocks, Bunny leads her nubile classmates in a contest to seduce a group of foreign dignitaries visiting London for disarmament talks…the winner being the first girl to get her V.I.P. into B-E-D!

    Escapist, sexist and as politically incorrect as they go, GAMES GIRLS PLAY (aka THE BUNNY CAPER) is a titillating product of its heedless time, directed with an unblinking eye by Jack Arnold (THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN) and costarring Ed Bishop (2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY).Read More »

  • Albert Brooks – Defending Your Life (1991)

    1991-2000Albert BrooksComedyUSA

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    Enchanting, always funny, sometimes hilarious, and featuring a surprisingly light comic performance from the ever adaptable Meryl Streep, this is the most likeable and endearing comedy to date for writer/director/star Albert Brooks. His satirical edge, so sharp in his three previous films — Real Life (1979), Modern Romance (1981), and Lost in America (1985) — seems at first glance to have been dulled, even if his funny bone is still in perfect working order. But Brooks is still mocking the human race; it’s just that his humor has become gentler, suggesting that his longtime bitterness has evolved into a bemused, perceptive wisdom. Those who have become addicted to the Brooks oeuvre and its underlying neurotic cynicism might be dismayed that their favorite artistic pessimist has created a film that can be labeled heartwarming. But most Brooks fans will be delighted to find intact the brand of raw, naked honesty about the writer/director’s own shortcomings they expect, treated with a tender forgiveness that’s a new development to be sure, but an entirely welcome one. Peopled with memorable supporting players (particularly Rip Torn as a gruff but amiable legal eagle), and overflowing with creative ideas about the afterlife and its machinations, Defending Your Life amounts to a must-see film from one of the funniest, most under-appreciated filmmakers of our time. — Karl Williams
    Read More »

  • Charles Chaplin – The Gold Rush (1925)

    USA1921-1930Charles ChaplinComedySilent

    Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader wrote:
    Charles Chaplin’s best-loved film, with the tramp down-and-out (as usual) in Alaska, where he looks for gold, falls in love with a dance-hall girl (Georgia Hale), eats his shoes for Thanksgiving dinner, and ends up a millionaire. The blend of slapstick and pathos is seamless, although the cynicism of the final scene is still surprising. Chaplin’s later films are quirkier and more personal, but this is quintessential Charlie, and unmissable. The film has been issued in several different forms with different sound tracks and cuts, including a 72-minute version butchered by Chaplin himself in the 40s. Hold out for the 1925 original, which runs 82 minutes.Read More »

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