As someone that frequently defends independent cinema, and have canonized the indie filmmakers that arose in the 1990s, it was always my secret shame that I had never seen Clerks, the film that launched Kevin Smith to auteur fame. It isn’t that I found the story uninteresting – in fact, the story fits right into…
Category: comedy
The Ruling Class (1972)
Peter O’Toole is perhaps the greatest actor of all time. From his breakout role in Lawrence of Arabia to his final roles on television and in cinema as the dignified elder statesman of great acting, O’Toole was an absolute titan of acting, and each of his performances were brilliant. Now many people point to the…
Hail Caesar! (2016)
Who doesn’t love a film about cinema itself? A while ago, I reviewed Trumbo, a film that told the true story of Dalton Trumbo, the screenwriter who was blacklisted from Hollywood for his Communist leanings. However interesting as that concept is, the film itself was mediocre. That wasn’t, however, the last time Communism in Hollywood…
Deadpool (2016)
I believe it was last year when the legendary Steven Spielberg theorized that the rise in superhero films appears to be closely related to the rise of Western films almost a century ago. He also theorized that the superhero genre itself will soon fade away, just like the western genre did, going from exhilarating and…
Tomorrow Night (1998)
I love independent films (which is not a new statement in any way), because they can tell stories you would never see in mainstream cinema. I love discovering new independent films, and honestly I don’t know if there is an independent comedy that I wouldn’t watch or at least be somewhat intrigued by. However, there…
Waiting for Guffman (1996)
Have you ever noticed that everyone has that one film (or multiple films) that when they are playing on television, you cannot avoid watching them, or a film so great and resonant that you rewatch it often? For me personally, it is not really a singular film that achieves this, but rather a singular director…
The Firemen’s Ball (1967)
I am not quite sure where I find the time and motivation to watch such bizarre and strange films, but it is certainly a wonderful feeling to watch something weird. Miloš Forman, in my humble opinion, has directed two of the greatest films ever made – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus, but…
Grandma (2015)
2015 was most certainly the seminal year for veterans actresses having their moment in the spotlight with lead roles in acclaimed films. Charlotte Rampling in 45 Years, Blythe Danner in I’ll See You in My Dreams, Dame Maggie Smith in The Lady in the Van, and perhaps most interestingly, Lily Tomlin in Grandma. I have…
The Science of Sleep (2006)
“Randomness is very difficult to achieve”, or so says Stéphanie, the love interest to our main character, Stephane, in the gloriously weird and absolutely wonderful surreal comedy The Science of Sleep (La Science des rêves). Michel Gondry has proven himself to be a remarkable director of surreal and mind-bending comedies that both serve as entertaining…
The Big Short (2015)
In 2013, Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio teamed up for a film that would show the seedy underbelly of the world of stockbrokers in their masterpiece dark comedy, The Wolf of Wall Street. It was a roaring success, and it was both an outrageously entertaining but also very informative and fascinating film – and it…
The Postmodern Pelican 