Moonrise Kingdom: American Comic
Wes Anderson turns our lives into a perfect documentary of feeling. It’s not real, but it’s important.
Comedy
Films which are comedic or have comedic elements to them
Shaun of the Dead
With pure style, Wright re-arms the entire genre against us. Through comedy, we become the living dead.
Shazam!
Not only does the movie walk on air, it never loses sight of the people on the ground. Few movies have been less ashamed to be themselves.
Swiss Army Man
Not a movie for the faint of anything. If you can get through the gross stuff, you might discover a romance.
His Girl Friday
The Grant/Russell pair could have made a hundred movies if this one didn’t count as all of them.
Dr. Strangelove
By employing, perverting, and redirecting the rules of wartime filmmaking to primary targets of his own design, Kubrick creates an encompassing and indispensable work of satire, penetrating as Orwell, snide as Vonnegut, enigmatic as Heller.
Duck Soup
The plot of Duck Soup doesn’t exist in any conventional sense. The fictional country of Freedonia appoints Groucho Marx their king but that isn’t the point. Duck Soup understands that plots exist not to make sense of the ensuing antics, but only to get Groucho into the center of attention for an hour.
The Bishop’s Wife
There isn’t a moment of romantic energy behind the interaction of Niven and Young in The Bishop’s Wife, and not one time that Cary Grant makes us happy to be on his side. Capra used to invite us to wonderful sleepy towns. Henry Koster takes us to one we’d rather sleep off.
The Kid
A film with almost no extra parts. It’s Chaplin’s art compressed into a beautiful little poem about being a dad.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Planes is special because it’s a comedy of errors that understands how that’s a comedy of human nature. John Candy will be a member of your family by the end.
That Touch of Mink
Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much was Day’s proof of concept, which based on her further career everyone seemed to ignore. That Touch of Mink, a film that makes Cary Grant look like he’s not an actor, is just the kind of spineless jaunt that I hate to associate her with.
The Scarecrow
For Buster, falling in love always amounts to running around. Of all his films, The Scarecrow conjures up the most idealized, literal Keaton. It is one of his shortest films, but remember: for Buster, this only means that he’s tuckered out sooner. So are we, in the best possible way.
Baby Driver
A shot of adrenaline in a tired genre. Edgar Wright has finally made a world that moves as fast as he does.
Jack and Jill: Congealed Laziness
Impenetrably lazy, more interested in ad revenue than comedy. The worst from a master of worsts.
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Here’s a tribute to the old “road to …” pictures. It might be the best of them, and no better than them.
Robin and the 7 Hoods
This moral naysaying is shockingly against type for a film bursting with Copacabana headliners. Remember that these are the guys hired explicitly to hold a mic in one hand, a drink in the other, and to generate a fantasy of wealth and well-meaningness that makes thousands of less charming people mistake clubbing for having fun. Robin and the 7 Hoods is drastically less endearing than any of its hoods.
Corpse Bride
A movie that actually should have been weirder: it’s the conventions of the plot that bog the movie down from being as beautiful as it looks.
One A.M.
This early studio work for Mutual Films, of which One A.M. stands apart if not in medium then in conviction, is less decipherable now, as though it comes from an era when music was rhythm without tone. Mutual is Chaplin’s most uninhibited work however, the work with the least distance to travel from his brain to the screen.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Adorable in a way movies aren’t anymore. The McDormand/Adams duo shines.
Ghostbusters (2016): The Problem with Fake Feminism
Merely a below-average comedy that becomes a slog by whoring out its cast for an ill-conceived marketing angle.
Punch-Drunk Love
Anderson saw Sandler’s rage and made a movie to justify it. The magic that results never gets old.
The Fault in Our Selves: Peter Rabbit and the Innocence Problem
Art isn’t just a product: it’s a testament to the beliefs that made it. What beliefs does Peter Rabbit celebrate? A belief in art or analytics, in magic or in marketing? I remember thinking the same of Kangaroo Jack, of which Peter Rabbit is more a successor than to Potter. At least it’s so disparate from itself that it says nothing about her and everything about us.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
How else would the smartest screenwriter of the century make a story about losing your mind, except by making it literal? A romance that counts as all of them.