Category Archives: Comedy

I am serious…and don’t call me Shirley.

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

Review: Ebony and Ivory — Fantastic Fest 2024

Ebony and Ivory is screening as part of Fantastic Fest 2024, which runs from September 19 to September 26.

Ebony and Ivory is absolute nonsense, and that isn’t entirely a bad thing. Imagine a biopic about the creative experience behind one of the best-selling duets in pop history (the Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder song of the title), then pay a back-alley surgeon to lobotomize that idea out of your brain forever. What remains might be Ebony and Ivory.

Jim Hosking, the director behind the divisive cult gross-out film The Greasy Strangler, brings the two legendary musical icons together in a cabin in rural Scotland, only to Continue reading Review: Ebony and Ivory — Fantastic Fest 2024 →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Western

Review: Mash Ville — Fantasia Festival 2024

Mash Ville is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

Mash Ville is the type of ensemble crime film that is so jam-packed with plotty incident and odd characters that it feels as though the film is doing a lot and thus must be doing something interesting and new. The film aspires to be something like an acid western, and it may also draw comparisons to Tarantino or the Coens, in that the film attempts to blend slick humor with farce with black comedy.

The problem with an overly plotted black comedy about death and crime is that, if you do too much, it becomes Continue reading Review: Mash Ville — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

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

Review: FAQ — Fantasia Festival 2024

FAQ is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

FAQ is an interesting little creature. It has an infectious personality, driven by the child actor at its center. For a small-scale story about childhood and parenting, it is doing quite a lot (perhaps too much). Even as it is unclear exactly where it is going, what its odd plot points are progressing toward, the film gets by on heart and charm and liveliness.

At its core, FAQ is a film about a daughter and a mother. Dong-chun (Park Na-eun) is a quiet, curious, and restless child who, despite an excelling mind, struggles to make sense of her studies. Her mother (Park Hyo-ju) is worried about Continue reading Review: FAQ — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Review: The Old Man and the Demon Sword — Fantasia Festival 2024

The Old Man and the Demon Sword is screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from July 18 to August 4.

Despite being extremely talky with heavily expository dialogue, the plot of Fábio Powers’ The Old Man and the Demon Sword is immediately confusing. Something meant to resemble a force field is cut through by a swordsman and his demon-possessed sword, initiating a battle against skeletal shadow people that no one else can see (save for the random older man of the title, who pops out of the bushes with a knife). The sword wants the barrier to be breached, for reasons I could not quite identify. And some sort of grand council is pulling the strings of the skeleton army, it seems.

The hooded hero has what is meant to be witty banter with the demon sword (João Loy), a trait carried over to the old man Tonho (Antonio da Luz) once he acquires the sword. The film, ostensibly, is an Continue reading Review: The Old Man and the Demon Sword — Fantasia Festival 2024 →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

IF (2024) Movie Review

John Krasinski’s IF is something of an imaginary creature in today’s cinema landscape. Paramount’s aspirant blockbuster is a full-on big budget children’s film with no attachment to established intellectual property. Compare this to essentially every other family offering coming up this summer: Despicable Me 4, The Garfield Movie, Inside Out 2, Harold and the Purple Crayon. The big purple elephant in the room is the weird imaginary friend movie that is a big studio risk in desperate search for an audience. This audience, one imagines, is families. The kids come for the colorful creatures that are wholly unrecognizable to them, and the parents stay for…potentially life threatening heart surgery?

The shame is that the diverse array of computer-generated imaginary things (they prefer to be called “ifs” for whatever reason) are mostly great visual effects, and they also are occasionally characters with personality. The potential for this to be Continue reading IF (2024) Movie Review →

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

Abigail (2024) Movie Review

The team of directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and screenwriter Guy Busick have been well-discussed on this site. I have, in general, enjoyed their recent output – Scream VI notwithstanding. Their latest, Abigail (based on a story by Stephen Shields, who also gets a shared writing credit), has a similar generic blend to 2019’s Ready or Not. The latter film, a violent and comedic Most Dangerous Game send-up taking place almost entirely at one lavish estate, was a good bit of morbid fun. Abigail, an even more violent comedy horror film taking place almost entirely at one lavish estate, is similarly good for a light bit of morbid fun.

The film has two distinct halves. In the first, a group of criminals hired to Continue reading Abigail (2024) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Romance

The Fall Guy (2024) Movie Review

David Leitch’s The Fall Guy is, in many respects, a love letter to the stunt performers that have allowed cinema to function properly for many a decade. At this level, the film definitely excels. Stuntman Colt Seavers’ (Ryan Gosling) opening voiceover monologue keys us in to the philosophy of the stunt performer: they keep everything looking exciting and propulsive, but their job is to be invisible by design. The best stunt performer disappears. Remember this; it will be important later.

Leitch’s comedy-action-romance benefits from the residual effects of the dump-truck of charisma that was Ryan Gosling in Barbie. Fittingly, the film opens the 2024 Summer movie season and promises an Continue reading The Fall Guy (2024) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) Movie Review

Somewhere in the midst of the haggard kerfuffle that is the frozen empire of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddemore tells Dan Aykroyd’s Ray Stantz something to the effect of the old cliché, “we’re getting too old for this.” This does not come across like a self-aware nod toward the inherent redundancy and inessential nature of Hollywood reboot culture. It feels more like the film accidentally self-reporting.

Personally (and fortunately, perhaps), I did not have to get too old before realizing that it is a waste of one’s time and energy to Continue reading Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Self Reliance (2024) Movie Review

With Self Reliance, Jake Johnson and The Lonely Island (Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer) have made a broad comedy rendition of David Fincher’s The Game. After a bad breakup with his partner, an aimless Thomas Walcott (Johnson) jumps at the chance to play a mysterious game of life and death, to be live-streamed to the dark web. The rules are simple: Thomas must survive 30 days of being hunted by assassins from Greenland who may or may not ever find him and who cannot harm him if he is within striking distance of another person. Seeing this last part as an exploitable loophole (more of a rule than a loophole, as it were), Thomas accepts the challenge.

For the first few days, Thomas is golden. He wakes up, lazily rides a recumbent bicycle, has a few shots of whisky at a bar, and calls it a day. No sign of any “production assistant ninjas” ready to film his murder. Then, one night, a window breaks while he is sleeping and he discovers Continue reading Self Reliance (2024) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

The Book of Clarence (2024) Movie Review

Jeymes Samuel’s The Harder They Fall was a pleasant surprise and a critical success for Netflix. His follow-up, The Book of Clarence, takes a similarly anachronistic approach to a familiar genre. This time, Samuel takes on the religious epic. The film presents an alternative biblical story adjacent to the story of the last days of Jesus Christ. This apocrypha is simplistic and familiar, so much so that when David Oyelowo’s John the Baptist exposition dumps the premise unnecessarily the plot itself almost feels like a punchline.

Clarence (LaKeith Stanfield) and his friend Elijah (RJ Cyler) owe a man known as Jedediah the Terrible (Eric Kofi Abrefa) money that they don’t have. To further complicate things, Clarence is Continue reading The Book of Clarence (2024) Movie Review →