Every small town has its secrets lurking beneath the idyllic surface. There have been so many works that situate themselves in quaint hamlets and use these settings as the foundation for examinations of the darker and more perverse side of society, usually being fashioned as darkly satirical subversions of common perceptions of small-town life. One…
Category: dark comedy
The Heroics (2021)
There’s something quite peculiar about The Heroics (French: Les héroïques), a particularly off-kilter quality that persists throughout the film. Perhaps it’s the tone, which oscillates between hilarious and tragic with very little difficulty, often in the same scene. It could possibly be the narrative, which is about as meandering as the main character’s life. The…
The People’s Joker (2024)
What is life other than the continuous process of trying to figure out your identity, and maintaining the image of being in control when in reality we are all as hopelessly clueless about existence as everyone else? It’s often been said that anyone who doesn’t have even a minor existential crisis at some point is…
The Second Act (2024)
While his work is divisive to the point where calling them an acquired taste would be enormously generous, it’s impossible to deny that Quentin Dupieux (otherwise known as Mr Oizo in some circles) is a filmmaker who has grown into one of the unique artistic visionaries of his generation and has continuously worked to redefine…
Four Lions (2010)
Satire has existed for as long as stories have been told – whether Jonathan Swift playfully advocated for the consumption of alternative forms of meat, or the nightly talk shows in which writers work around the clock to give their hosts the most up-to-date jokes possible, we have been culturally predisposed to laughing at ourselves…
The New Year That Never Came (2024)
Every revolution begins with just one dissenting voice – in some cases, it’s delivered as a scream, in others it is a mere whisper, but regardless of how it is announced, it signals the beginning of a journey towards change from which any return seems to be impossible, at least as far as those dedicated…
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
Nothing inspires creativity and audacity more than rejection and failure – and few artists knew this more than Shane Black, whose career as a relatively successful screenwriter was brought to a grinding halt when one of his films did not perform as expected, leading to him becoming one of the countless casualties of Hollywood’s notoriously…
Law of Desire (1987)
The further one leaps into the careers of artists they admire, the more likely they are to find works that are not only great representations of their creativity, but also serve as clear building blocks that assist in creating their distinctive style. In the case of Pedro Almodóvar, he started as an agent provocateur at…
The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (1942)
There are a few themes that are the foundation for literature – love, family and death being the most prominent of them. The latter in particular is not notable, since it has spawned into many different kinds of stories, most significantly the idea of the murder mystery, which has been popular for about as long…
A Different Man (2024)
Beauty is only skin-deep, and it is what’s inside that matters most of all – throughout our lives, we all tend to be introduced to the concept of never judging someone based on their appearance, and instead getting to know them before coming to a conclusion about their character. Unfortunately, life has also taught us…
The Postmodern Pelican 