Comedy-drama
Written and directed by Darren Grodsky and Danny Jacobs
Movies that start as broad comedies and turn serious seldom work. The transition is tricky, especially if you don’t layer in enough reality between the big laughs before the drama begins.
Yet first-time writers/directors Darren Grodsky and Danny Jacobs pull it off beautifully in Humboldt County. [...]
Sports Comedy
Written by Jimmy Tsai and Jessica Yu
Directed by Jessica Yu
We all know the sports movie formula: Plot twist puts lovable loser(s) into a situation where he, she, or they must rise over adversity, get over the mental block that’s been holding them back, train tirelessly for the length of a montage, and win [...]
Spoof
Written and directed by Anna Biller
Anna Biller wants to out-auteur Charlie Chaplin. Not only did she write, direct, and co-produce this parody of late sixties/early seventies exploitation flicks, but she stars in the title role. She also wrote some of the songs, animated a drug-induced dream sequence, and designed the sets and costumes. She even [...]
Tags: Bad Movies · Comedy · Reviews
Action Comedy
Written by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember
Directed by Peter Segal
I approach films based on old TV shows with suspicion, but the comic potential of Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart lowered my guard. But while Get Smart has its charms, it doesn’t fulfill that potential by a long shot.
Carell wisely doesn’t attempt to imitate [...]
Very broad satire
Written by Uwe Boll and Bryan C. Knight; based on the video game
Directed by Uwe Boll
Postal starts with a promising scene for an intentionally offensive comedy. Two terrorists in an airliner cockpit (presumably on 9/11) discuss how many virgins they’ll get in the afterlife. It turns out they’ve been given different numbers, and [...]
Dramatic comedy
Written by Diablo Cody
Directed by Jason Reitman
The last thing I expected before the year ended was a comedy about unintentional pregnancy that was more truthful, more insightful, and just plain funnier than Knocked Up. I found one. You could go to movies for years and not find anything as good as Juno.
Ellen [...]
Family-friendly fantasy comedy
Written by Bill Kelly
Directed by Kevin Lima
Howard Hawks’ famous criteria for a great film–three good scenes and no bad ones–almost applies to this family fantasy. It has more than three great scenes. But it also has a few that border on the edge of just plain bad, and some horrendously cast lead [...]
Musical
Written and directed by John Turturro
To a radical non-smoker like myself–someone who finds the act of smoking about as sexy as Dick Cheney–the very term “Romance and Cigarettes” seems odd. That’s appropriate. John Turturro’s musical tragi-comedy about marriage and adultery is a very odd motion picture. The songs are familiar hits, and for the [...]
Tags: Comedy · Music · Reviews
If people know anything about Charlie Chaplin, they know he made silent movies. And if they know anything about silent movies, they want said movies to be accompanied by live music. And yet the upcoming Chaplin series at the Pacific Film Archive, screening nearly all of his features and all of his later shorts, has [...]
Tags: Comedy · Silent Films · Upcoming & Local
Romantic comedy
Written by Pierce Gardner and Peter Hedges
Directed by Peter Hedges
Peter Hedges does something unusual here. He puts a major comedy star (Steve Carell) into a conventional comic plot (widower with adorable kids falls in love with his brother’s girlfriend), then plays it for real emotions without worrying much about laughs. Instead [...]