comedy
Le Havre (2011) is a still, quiet and dryly hilarious film. It has many of the qualities of a Japanese master like Mizoguchi, but if he had emigrated to a small French port and had been forced to make working class comedies. It focuses on a shoe shiner called Marcel Marx whose wife contracts a seemingly terminal disease.
For as long as there have been films, there have been coming of age movies and there have been high school movies. These types of film, these genres, have become so overdone, that it becomes hard for a single film to really stand out. Dope does.
The marketing team for Paul Feig’s most recent film, Spy, should really reconsider their occupation: this was one of my first thoughts as the credits for the film rolled and I began to head for the exit. The trailers and posters for the film made it seem like little more than Paulina Blart:
At the start of Andrew Bujalski’s latest film, Results, Danny (Kevin Corrigan) entreats his wife, Christine (Elizabeth Berridge), from the street below the open window of their New York apartment to let him back into the marital home. She closes the window, so he grabs its ledge in an attempt to pull himself up to and through the plate glass barrier. Danny, who carries Corrigan’s rosaceous, wan features, brittle hair, and generous paunch (sorry, Kevin), quickly drops to the ground.
Inside Out is the latest in a long line of Pixar films that deal with the personification of something that you may have thought to be emotionless. Rather than bugs, toys, or fish this time, though, it is dealing directly with emotions themselves. What if the inner workings of our head were similar to an operational business, where our emotions literally guide and influence the actions in our daily life?
Like many people, I was a great fan of Bridesmaids and The Heat, so it was likely that the newest film to pair Paul Feig and Melissa McCarthy would be right up my alley. Likely, but even I had my doubts over Spy. A spy comedy?
“There’s no such thing as nothing.” Paranoid. Obsessive.
The Voices, the English language debut of French-Iranian director Marjane Satrapi, unarguably gives Ryan Reynolds the best acting role of his career. Sadly, his gleefully maniacal performance is the sole positive – and that is most likely due to the lack of interesting roles he’s been given throughout his career that make this performance stand out in comparison. The character he’s playing is badly devised and written, yet Reynolds somehow manages to make the character compelling.
I had great hopes for Man Up from the minute I saw the trailer. I love romantic comedies, and if they’re set in London then more the better. I also absolutely adore Simon Pegg and find Lake Bell to be pretty brilliant too.
For most people Pitch Perfect wasn’t something they saw in the cinema. They watched in on DVD on a whim or chanced it after hearing about it from a friend. Released just as Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson’s careers were on the rise (and was possibly one of the films that gave them a leg up) it initially went under the radar, but as the years have passed the film has garnered great reviews and the Barden Bellas now have a huge fanbase.
Fun relies on spontaneity. If you over-plan something, the less likely it is that people are going to have fun, because nothing will ever live up to expectations. Happiness equally relies on spontaneity and equally cannot be forced; the family in Force Majeure appear to be happy as the movie starts, yet look closely and you’ll see everything isn’t so straightforward.
There is no formula for making a perfect kids film, yet studios have set up entire animated devisions that churn out movies under the tried-and-tested “jokes for the parents and jokes for the kids” formula. The twin assumptions that filmmakers don’t feel children are sophisticated enough to understand certain jokes in a movie tailor-made for them and that parents also need to be pandered to in order for them to enjoy the film are relatively new. After all, back in the early days of silent cinema, most movies were experiences for the entire family, with everybody (no matter how young or old) being catered to equally.
There are those people who turn their noses up at the romantic comedy. They see it as a silly kind of film designed to entertain a delusional audience. I am not one of those people.
No matter how good their circumstances are, many young people wish they were born in a different time, in a different place, belonging to a different generation they believe they fit in with more. This is almost definitely due to the influence of pop-culture; the 80’s weren’t exactly the best time to live in, yet show a John Hughes movie to any impressionable teenager and they will almost definitely long to have lived in that time period. While We’re Young, the best film to date from director Noah Baumbach, takes a unique look at this theme in the space of one of the best movie montages in recent memory – whereas the young, hipster types long to live in an area of vinyls, VHS tapes and typewriters, the ageing are trying to stay relevant to today, filling their lives with useless technology in order to stay relevant in an ever changing society.
Although it may not be for everyone due to its pitch-black tone, Wild Tales is a film that I imagine everybody who sees it can relate to in some way. It is a film about one of the most basic human emotions, one that is rarely the central emotion of any movie: anger.