Category Archives: Comedy

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All Movie Reviews, Animation, Comedy, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Blaise — Fantasia Festival 2026 Movie Review

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Blaise is screening as part of the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Blaise opens with the eponymous character, an awkward teen who struggles socially, in a meeting between his parents and the school counselor. His mother asks if he is having troubles connecting due to being gifted, to which the counselor resolutely answers, “No.” This is Blaise (Timeo), a remarkably unremarkable young man with little direction and no desire to mingle with his peers. When forced to attend a party, he wallflowers until a woman named Josephine (Nina Blanc-Francard) inserts herself into his space.

The film follows these characters as they navigate their individual insecurities. Blaise’s father (Jacques Gamblin) is described (by someone he considered a friend) as a moron without a political consciousness. The film’s political consciousness comes with a tone of curt acidity. Class divide is presented as Continue reading Blaise — Fantasia Festival 2026 Movie Review →

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The Peril at Pincer Point — Fantasia Festival 2026 Movie Review

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The Peril at Pincer Point is screening as part of the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival.

The low budget fantasy comedy The Peril at Pincer Point follows a film industry sound engineer named Jim Baitte (Jack Redmayne), who is on the verge of getting sacked off the latest project from big shot director P.W. Griffin (Os Leanse). To save his job, he must travel to the remote island of Pincer Point and capture a sound so special that it has never before been recorded in human history. Directed by Noah Stratton-Twine and Jake Kuhn, Pincer Point is an imaginative and idiosyncratic film with a DIY aesthetic and its heart on its sleeve. As such, it is sure to win over the festival audience.

The film has a specific sense of humor, and one’s mileage will vary. There is something intriguing about the long-winding, antagonistic conversations that the protagonist is continually pulled into. These conversations will sometimes drone on for minutes on end, circling around illogically and ending in a place that Continue reading The Peril at Pincer Point — Fantasia Festival 2026 Movie Review →

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After School (Straf) — Fantasia Festival 2026 Movie Review

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After School is screening as part of the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival.

“We’re men, but we also have a little boy inside of us … a little baby inside.”

After School is something of a comedy of errors, in which the prime error is leaning into all the wrong ideas about masculinity. It is not a satire, per se, but its characters present as exaggerated versions of what the “manosphere’ produces and invites. Edwin (Rutger de Bekker) is a schoolteacher who has no control over his classroom. This is a metaphor for his life in general. His coworkers mostly step over him. His wife left him for a shaman peddling hallucinatory drugs. His daughter is embarrassed of him. His students have made him an internet lolcow, posting classroom pranks to the point where his viral status causes him to lose a promotion. He is the perfect candidate for a midlife identity crisis.

When alcohol, boxing, and male camaraderie combine, Edwin is inspired to stand up for himself in the classroom. The next time his students prank him Continue reading After School (Straf) — Fantasia Festival 2026 Movie Review →

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You Are the Film — Fantasia Festival 2026 Movie Review

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You Are the Film is screening as part of the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Madoka (Marika Ito) is going to see a film. It is not a popular title, and it is playing at a tiny theater attended by no one but herself. But it is a film shot locally, so she decides to give it a try. In the film, Kazuma (Kai Inowaki) is going to see a film. What he sees on that cinema screen is Madoka. Madoka is a playwright for a small theatre troupe, Kazuma is the frontman of a fledgling rock band that’s going nowhere. Their lives not only share similarities, but they are seemingly operating in direct parallel—a parallel they are able to physically see through the apparatus of the cinema screen. They see each other through the screen and can communicate to one another, and both want the other to leave the theater so something interesting can happen in their respective film.

Madoka, upset to hear from the synopsis of the “film” in which she is starring that some of her actors want to drop out of her new production, is the first to leave the auditorium. Kazuma watches as, Continue reading You Are the Film — Fantasia Festival 2026 Movie Review →

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Dance Freak — Fantasia Festival 2026 Movie Review

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Dance Freak is screening as part of the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Obie (Robbie Rackleff) wants to build a birdhouse in his birdhouse-building class. Obie’s girlfriend Dorty (Megan Koester), who’s a popular candidate in the mayoral race, just dumped him. The Salad Boys (Allen Cordell, Adam Enders, Sarah Sherman) recently force-fed Obie a concerning amount of salad. Obie has been told that a man dancing freakily out in the parking lot—a Dance Freak, if you will—has made himself “available” to Obie. Obie is being investigated for murder.

Thus is Dance Freak, the debut feature film from Alan Resnick and Robbie Rackleff. It is a surrealist comedy with horrific undertones, although these descriptors do little to describe the feeling and atmosphere of the film.

Rackleff (who also writes and stars) and Resnick were previously members of the Baltimore-based arts collective known as Wham City. Resnick is perhaps best known for Continue reading Dance Freak — Fantasia Festival 2026 Movie Review →

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Review: Sugar Rot — Fantasia Festival 2025

Sugar Rot had its Quebec premiere on Aug 1 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Sugar Rot is billed as a feminist, punk rock, body horror film. It does involve the horrific transformation of a body, that of the protagonist fittingly named Candy (Chloe Macleod). One location in the film presents a few punk rock bands performing. And the John Waters-esque story world produced by director Becca Kozak is obsessed with female body standards and the normalization of the exploitation of women’s bodies. So, check, check, and check on the billing. At face value, at least.

There is a cruel contradiction at the sugary core of Sugar Rot. As Candy’s body becomes candy (literally), every character wants to Continue reading Review: Sugar Rot — Fantasia Festival 2025 →

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Review: $POSITIONS — Fantasia Festival 2025

$POSITIONS had its Quebec premiere on July 30 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

It is hard to shake the resemblance between Brandon Daley’s $POSITIONS and Benny and Josh Safdie’s Good Time. The two brothers at the center, the economically motivated premise, the ill-conceived choices, the propulsive synth score. The two films are so similar, in fact, that by the time this review goes live, every other person on the Internet will likely have already made the comparison.

The biggest difference between the two films is in the tone, where $POSITIONS is more overtly comedic. More specifically, it is a comedy of errors meets grossout comedy sort of cringe comedy. And its gags get so Continue reading Review: $POSITIONS — Fantasia Festival 2025 →

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Review: OBEX — Fantasia Festival 2025

OBEX had its Canadian premiere on July 29 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

It’s 1987. “Computer” Conor (Albert Birney, who also directs) spends his morning talking lovingly to his dog Sandy and watching the news on one of the three television sets stacked in a row in the middle of his living room. He works from home, rapidly typing out on his Macintosh computer digital recreations of photographs that people send to him. His neighbor Mary (Callie Hernandez) arrives weekly to check up on him and bring him groceries, but he never opens the door.

While thumbing through a computer hobbyist catalogue, Conor stumbles upon a mysterious ad for a video game called “OBEX.” Not only is it a game, but it is Continue reading Review: OBEX — Fantasia Festival 2025 →

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Review: I Fell in Love with a Z-Grade Director in Brooklyn — Fantasia Festival 2025

I Fell in Love with a Z-Grade Director in Brooklyn had its world premiere on July 23 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Shina Mizuhara (Ui Mihara) is a bored actress. Promoting her new film, she lazily answers softball press questions. When she doesn’t get anything satisfying out of the interview, she turns to the camera and starts drooling. Completely unmotivated, Shina strives for a change of pace by vacationing in New York City.

Jack (Estevan Munoz) is an imaginative and passionate wannabe filmmaker. Growing up on Nirvana, George Romero, and Takashi Miike, Jack wants nothing more than to bring a punk rock ethos to film. Instead, he is a lowly intern for a New York studio, slaving away while only getting slightly closer to his dream.

When Shina and Jack get drunk at the same dive bar (and Jack finds Shina outside lying in someone else’s puke), an unlikely Continue reading Review: I Fell in Love with a Z-Grade Director in Brooklyn — Fantasia Festival 2025 →

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Review: Hold the Fort — Fantasia Festival 2025

Hold the Fort had its world premiere on July 16 as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Herbert Gruber (Mark Ashworth) sets down a box of “Shoot ‘Em Dead” shotgun shells and hands his wife Mable (Devney Nixon) a wooden stake. Herb insists that nothing could convince him to sell his family’s land. Over his dead body, and all that. “Nothing’s takin’ my land,” Herb says. Then, he arms himself for a night full of a cryptid sort of self-defense.

William Bagley’s Hold the Fort is a broad horror comedy centering on the new tenants of Gruber Hills. Following Herb apparently not making it through the night, the suburb has a new home for sale. Lucas (Chris Mayers) and Jenny (Haley Leary) arrive to the warm welcome of the HOA representative (Julian Smith), who informs them of the portal that annually sends through a bevy of Continue reading Review: Hold the Fort — Fantasia Festival 2025 →