It goes without saying that comedy is very subjective, and that what is funny for one individual may not be the same for another. As a result, a great deal of comedy tends to struggle to be carried over geographical and temporal boundaries, which often results in films that are beloved at first, but tend…

Like with anything, the more contact you have with a particular kind of work, the more you come to notice similarities between them. When it becomes to Soviet-era Russian comedies, the pattern is almost always the same – upbeat storylines that place emphasis on the working class (who are truly thrilled to have menial, laborious…

The Marks woman are an idiosyncratic family living in modern-day California. They’re led by matriarch Jane (Brenda Blethyn), who has found a new lease on life as she progresses into old age, choosing to try and regain her youth through cosmetic surgery and flirting with any man who shows her even the slightest bit of…

Victor (Cary Grant) and Hilary (Deborah Kerr) seem like the quintessential English couple – they have been happily married for over a decade, have a couple of children and a lovely property in the countryside. In actuality, they are the Earl and Lady Rhyall, descended from a long line of aristocrats that have allowed them…

Dante (Roberto Benigni) is a man who knows how to have a good time, even if he doesn’t always realize it. He primarily works as a volunteer bus driver for mentally-handicapped adults, and earns a living scamming the government for insurance benefits, falsely claiming to have suffered an accident that left him partially disabled and…

Based on his lengthy career in comedy, the concept of pushing the envelope has come to be synonymous with Sacha Baron Cohen, and has made him both an oddly beloved figure, and someone reviled by those who are not attuned to his peculiar sense of humour. From his breakout in the early 2000s, he established…

With the exception of one or two, the films of Sofia Coppola tend to arrive more as a whisper than they do with a bang, which is very much what we have come to expect from someone whose work is impelled more by description than discussion. They emerge quietly, rather than bursting onto the scene,…

When playwright Radha Blank didn’t see people like her reflected on screen, she decided to take matters into her own hands, rather than waiting around to see a story like hers produced. Independent cinema tends to allow for this kind of intrepid risk, and while many such filmmakers tend to fade into obscurity after initially…

I recently wrote about revisiting Barry Sonnenfeld’s adaptations of The Addams Family for the first time since I was much younger, and what wonderful experiences they were, especially since they hold up so wonderfully all these years later, so the nostalgia is not misguided or ill-conceived. Conversely, I had a look at Hocus Pocus again,…

Robert Altman didn’t make films so much as he did weave intricate tapestries of the human condition. Some of his best-known work as employed the principle that each person has their own story worth telling, and that when put alongside each other, we can get glimpses into sides of our species that aren’t often seen…