Keyword results: Comedy
Little Miss Sunshine
With a cast of characters initially tied together only by the family unit and their own fallibility,Little Miss Sunshine is a road trip film of a different nature. A smoking mother, an overly aspirational father, a drug-addict grandfather, a suicidal uncle and amute son are in stark contrast the youngest daughter whose dreams of becoming a beauty queen are wonderfully misplaced.
Black Sheep
New Zealand. Killer sheep. The genius of this kind of high-concept is that it lets the poster alone tell you everything you need to know about Black Sheep. (Of course, it all falls apart if there’s only emptiness sitting behind the high concept. Last year, all we wanted were snakes. Snakes on a plane.
The Boss Of It All
Lars Von Trier is not a happy camper. The sadistic tendencies of his anti-cinema have resulted in wildly bleak films that are often fascinating in theory, but not nearly so interesting to actually sit through. When he introduces his latest, The Boss Of It All, by announcing it won’t be preachy – “It’s a comedy and it’s harmless” – should we believe him?
An actor is hired to play the part of an imaginary CEO, invented to spare the real boss any backlash from unpopular decisions.
Lucky Miles
Can we shift gears into First Person for a moment? Thanks. I’m not proud of it, but should admit my occasional cultural cringe towards Australian cinema. When I heard “first time director” alongside “refugee comedy” Ifeared the worst – well-meaning choir-preaching combined withblunt-force political laughs – so no one was more surprised than me to find that Lucky Miles is actually very, very good.
Knocked Up
Someone needs to put Kevin Smith on suicide watch, because Knocked Up is the film he’s been trying to make for years. He fails because he can’t balance his bawdy comedy with anything like actual emotion. (Or,in Clerks 2, anything like actual humans.)
The man behind the surprisingly sweet The 40 Year Old Virgin and the much-loved (and cancelled after a single season) TV series Freaks and Geeks has shown Smith how to do it right in this new comedy juggernaut.
Freeway (1996)
Before Hollywood romances and biopics made her respectable, Reece Witherspoon was Vanessa: a violent, white-trash Little Red Riding Hood who prays that God doesn’t hate her “any more than usual”. It’s been over a decade, but finally Matthew Bright’s funny and disturbing Freeway arrives on DVD.
For Your Consideration
When Christopher Guest - writer of ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ and ‘Waiting For Guffman’ -releases a new film, you can’t help but feel both excited and burdened with the weight of expectation. You expect wit. You expect loveable, awkward characters. You expected Eugene Levy.
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