Archive for the ‘Comedy/Laffs’ Category
Monday, June 1st, 2026
May 24, 1996
WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE was a big deal at the time. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance with its brutally relatable, darkly funny portrait of the cruelty of children and the pain of not fitting in. It became a surprise hit and introduced moviegoers to an exciting new voice, writer/director Todd Solondz. Luckily nobody knew about his more Woody-Allen-like 1989 debut FEAR, ANXIETY & DEPRESSION, in which he starred as a neurotic playwright.
This is the story of Dawn Wiener (rookie Heather Matarazzo), a friendless seventh grader in suburban New Jersey. I love the opening scene, which vividly captures the terror of being an awkward kid in a noisy middle school cafeteria trying to find somewhere to sit. There’s a diabolical spin on a trope because she finds gloomy burnout Lolita (Victoria Davis) all alone and joins her, though their interaction is cold. When a group of giggly cheerleaders come over to ask, “Hi Dawn, sorry to bother you but we were just wondering, are you a lesbian?” we know in our bones that this freak is supposed to defend this geek. She’d rather stay out of it but she feels bad enough for Dawn or just has enough disdain for the cheerleaders to step in, tell off the bullies and become Dawn’s unlikely friend and protector. And it will be so moving. Except that doesn’t happen at all. Lolita joins in with the taunting and goes on to become Dawn’s worst bully. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brendan Sexton III, Eric Mabius, Heather Matarazzo, Ken Leung, Matthew Faber, Todd Solondz
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 11 Comments »
Thursday, May 28th, 2026
May 24, 1996
I’m not saying this as a complaint, this is not why I didn’t like the movie, but I was kinda surprised to watch SPY HARD thirty years later and find out that it was not in any way a parody of DIE HARD. I mean obviously it’s a spoof of spy movies, and also a few action movies, and also a few random other things pulled out of a box with a blindfold. But the only thing Inoticed that made me think of DIE HARD was a shot of plummeting much like the death of Hans Grueber. But this isn’t the villain at the end, it’s the hero’s lady in a prologue.
You all remember how it went down. Leslie Nielsen was a veteran actor going back to the ‘50s, then the Zucker Brothers put him in AIRPLANE! and found out how fun it was to see him acting serious about ridiculous things. So they made him the star of their tv show Police Squad!, which moved to the big screen as NAKED GUN: FROM THE FILES OF POLICE SQUAD!, which then got two sequels, and now many of us mainly knew Nielsen as a comedy guy. So then directors unaffiliated with Zucker-Abrams proceeded to use him in less successful (both artistically and financially) spoofs, and they either weren’t nearly as good at this style of comedy or just got to the party too late and we were already sick of this type of shit. In the case of SPY HARD I’d say it was both. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: "Weird Al" Yankovic, Aaron Seltzer, Andy Griffith, Dick Chudnow, Jason Friedberg, Leslie Nielsen, Mason Gamble, Mr. T, Nicollette Seridan, Rick Friedberg, spoof, Stephanie Romanov
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 19 Comments »
Wednesday, May 6th, 2026
May 3, 1996
THE PALLBEARER is not a movie I was interested in in 1996, because it was, as far as I could tell, a romcom starring David Schwimmer. I didn’t even watch Friends, why would I branch into his cinematic efforts? But 30 years later I was curious because it turns out this is the directorial debut of one Matt Reeves, whose subsequent works have been the following: CLOVERFIELD, LET ME IN, DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES, and THE BATMAN. Apparently he also created and directed 5 episodes of a television show called Felicity and it would be interesting to know if this kind of has a similar feel in many ways, including the way it integrates the score by Stewart Copeland (FRESH), but you’d have to asks someone else for that information. I only know that I liked all of those movies he directed, as well as his one credit prior to this – UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY, which he co-wrote with Richard Hatem.
Reeves’ debut here is produced by his pal J.J. Abrams (credited as Jeffrey Abrams) and written with Jason Katims, a story editor from My So-Called Life who later developed Roswell and worked on Friday Night Lights. With its ugly poster and DVD cover I always pictured THE PALLBEARER as some shitty, uncinematic comedy Reeves would be embarrassed of, but actually it’s a good looking indie type of movie, shot on location in New York by motherfuckin Robert Elswit, who had already done HARD EIGHT and would go on to not only shoot most of Paul Thomas Anderson’s other movies but also MICHAEL CLAYTON, REDBELT, THE TOWN, NIGHTCRAWLER and many other fine films. The guy seems to know camera stuff pretty good in my opinion, so it looks like a real movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Barbara Hershey, Carol Kane, David Schwimmer, Gwyneth Paltrow, J.J. Abrams, Matt Reeves, Michael Rapaport, Michael Vartan, Robert Elswit, Toni Collette
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Romance | 18 Comments »
Tuesday, April 21st, 2026
Last week I asked Mrs. Vern if she’d want to see the new Bob Odenkirk action movie from the same writer as JOHN WICK and NOBODY. She loves both of those movies as much as I do (and Odenkirk going back to the Mr. Show days) so of course she did. Then on Saturday, as we were getting ready to go, she asked “What is this movie called, by the way?” I guess I’d sold her on it pretty much the same way I would a new Jason Statham – just the new Bob Odenkirk action movie. I hope he does another one and the poster says “ODENKIRK” at the top in giant letters.
NORMAL opens in Osaka, with a great Japanese cover of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” and a group of Yakuza atoning for some type of failure by cutting off a pinky and accepting a new job. The job sends them to some small American town called Normal, Minnesota.
Odenkirk does not play one of the Yakuza. He plays Ulysses Richardson, also a fuckup arriving in Normal for a shit job, though in narration he tries to sell it to us as a pretty good one. He’s the interim sheriff, because the old one died, so he’s there to stamp forms and maintain the status quo for the five weeks until the election. He’s playing dumb a little, though. He acts like there’s nothing suspicious, but we see his eyebrows raising at various red flags. We even see him looking at the sheriff’s death certificate and later quizzing the guy who signed it. I’m sure it’s nothing, though. Don’t worry about it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Wheatley, Billy MacLellan, Bob Odenkirk, Brendan Fletcher, Derek Kolstad, Henry Winkler, Jess McLeod, Lena Headey, Peter Shinkoda, Reena Jolly, Ryan Allen
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs, Crime | 16 Comments »
Wednesday, April 8th, 2026
I know prequels are always divisive, but I’m usually willing to give them a shot. When I revisited THE FLINTSTONES for my summer of ’94 retrospective, I decided it was time to finally found out how it all began. Then I waited two years. But now I have watched it.
THE FLINTSTONES IN VIVA ROCK VEGAS comes from the same director as the original, Brian Levant (PROBLEM CHILD 2), but not until six years later, with almost an entirely new cast. According to a 2024 SyFy.com article, Universal wanted to film two sequels back-to-back, but John Goodman didn’t want to do another one. Levant theorized, “I think it came down to one thing: people coming up to him in airports and going ‘Yabba-dabba-doo!’ He didn’t like it.”
So they made it a prequel about the characters entering adulthood, but oddly they didn’t cast people who look that age, so it doesn’t really feel like a good explanation for the recast. These actors are in fact younger, but I’m afraid the main difference between John Goodman at 42 and Mark Addy (JACK FROST) at 36 is not their ages. Addy does fine, and Kristen Johnston (AUSTIN POWERS: THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME) is pretty good as Wilma (is it weird that she reminded me of Emma Stone here?). Stephen Baldwin (POSSE) is definitely not as good as Rick Moranis at playing Barney, but honestly the problem is mainly just that we know he’s Stephen Baldwin and that they let him have ‘90s hair. I can’t honestly say he’s bad in it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Cumming, Ann-Margret, Brian Levant, Deborah Kaplan, Harry Elfont, Harvey Korman, Jane Krakowski, Jim Cash, Joan Collins, John Cho, John Taylor, Kristen Johnston, Mark Addy, Stephen Baldwin
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 22 Comments »
Monday, March 30th, 2026
THEY WILL KILL YOU is one of those rare cases where the first time I saw the trailer was the first time I heard of it, and before it was over it had become one of my most anticipated movies. What it conveyed was that Zazie Beetz (GEOSTORM) would play a maid at a hotel that’s run by satanists, they try to sacrifice her, she runs around with a sword chopping them up in spectacular, stylized action scenes. It looked like KILL BILL meets READY OR NOT, and that shorthand does capture some of it. But happily the trailer was also holding back some of the other ingredients in the pot, and they all add up to a fun time at the motion picture house.
Beetz plays Asia Reaves, who ten years ago was on the streets with her little sister Maria (I think there’s a young version whose name I can’t find, but the grown up Maria is Myha’la, BODIES BODIES BODIES). They were running from their abusive father when Asia landed herself in prison. Now she’s out, showing up on a stormy night for a job as a maid at a historic apartment building called The Virgil. I would say this was secretly a sinister place, but they’re pretty open about it – there’s a big pentagram and devil sculptures on the exterior. The characters don’t try to be subtle any more than the movie does. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Litvak, Angus Sampson, Carlos Rafael Rivera, Heather Graham, James Remar, Kirill Sokolov, Myha'la Herrold, Paterson Joseph, Patricia Arquette, Tom Felton, Zazie Beetz
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, March 10th, 2026
As a fan of writer/director Steven Kostanski’s last three movies, PSYCHO GOREMAN, FRANKIE FREAKO and DEATHSTALKER, I decided it was time to check out one of his older works. MANBORG is his first feature, released in 2011. He had already done several shorts (best title: Lazer Ghosts 2: Return to Laser Cove) while working in the makeup departments of larger productions including CAPOTE and TAMARA.
I would say MANBORG is a tongue-in-cheek movie played with a slightly straighter face than the other three Kostanskis I’ve seen, or at least with fewer straight up jokes. So it’s maybe his purest example of what I think of as a movie in quotes – a feature film that plays more like it’s saying “wouldn’t it be funny if there was a movie like this?” than like it actually is that movie. To enjoy it is to play along and pretend that it is. (And I did enjoy it.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Astron-6, Conor Sweeney, Kyle Hebert, Steven Kostanski
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 7 Comments »
Friday, February 27th, 2026
YOUR MONSTER is a 2024 romantic comedy with a fantastical genre concept. Laura (Melissa Barrera, ABIGAIL) is a theater actor who gets dumped by her longtime boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donovan, CIVIL WAR) while she’s in the hospital getting cancer treatments. She lived with him, so when she gets discharged she goes to stay at her wealthy but absent mother’s house to try to put herself back together. But she doesn’t really get around to that. She mostly eats pies that her mom sends and cries so much that she starts getting regular Kleenex shipments from Amazon.
Then one day she’s startled by a monster (Tommy Dewey, STEP UP REVOLUTION) in the closet. He’s not that fancy of a monster, just kinda like Ron Perlman’s Beast on Beauty and the Beast – gnarly brow, lion-like nose, long hair and beard, hairy hands. He is a monster, but he wears t-shirts and just talks like a dude. When she wakes up from fainting he’s kinda offended she doesn’t remember him. He reminds her she saw him under her bed when she was a kid. And he chased off some dork who tried to kiss her and tried to shame her for not wanting to. I think she remembers.
Anyway, he says the house is his now and she needs to get the fuck out. She cries for a while, so he gives her two weeks. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Caroline Lindy, Edmund Donovan, Kayla Foster, Meghann Fahy, Melissa Barrera, musical theater, Tommy Dewey
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Fantasy/Swords, Romance | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, February 11th, 2026
QUEENS OF THE DEAD is a 2025 zombie comedy written and directed by Tina Romero. Yes, that Tina Romero. The one who was in LAND OF THE DEAD.
Oh shit, yeah — and also George Romero’s daughter. She’s continuing the family business in the sense that she made a movie and it’s zombies and it’s a diverse cast and it contains commentary about our times. But she’s got her own thing going stylistically and tonally – this is flashy, neon, and undeniably a comedy. It cares about its characters and the deaths can hurt, but laughs are the priority, scares are not.
Now, I don’t want this to sound wrong, but just for context I don’t really follow or get drag. I did recently enjoy THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT and I think that gave me some appreciation for the artistry and humor of it, but it’s not really a tradition I relate to I guess. So I have no clue how this plays to people who are closer to that world. I tried to sell a drag-savvy co-worker on it and he seemed skeptical.
But personally I was very impressed by the character credited as “ZombiQueen” (Julie J, whose IMDb “Known for” section includes Bang Bus and Street Blowjobs). She opens the movie strutting into a church, meticulously decked in gaudy rhinestones, giant blue hair, silver boots and nails, on a mission to pray to God because “after the day I’ve had I need a word with Her.” But her day gets worse. She gets a chunk of her shoulder (and costume) bit off by a zombified priest. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dominique Jackson, drag queens, Easter, Easter horror, Jack Haven, Jaquel Spivey, Julie J, Katy O'Brian, Kimball Farley, Margaret Cho, Nina West, Quincy Dunn-Baker, Riki Lindhome, Sarah Coffey, Tina Romero, Tom Savini, Tomas Matos
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, February 10th, 2026
BLUE MOON is one of Richard Linklater’s two 2025 joints, the one that’s in English and that he didn’t sell to Netflix and that was nominated for two Oscars (actor and original screenplay). At a glance it doesn’t sound like the most typical Linklater picture, because it’s about the songwriter Lorenz Hart when his partner Richard Rodgers has just started a successful new team with Oscar Hammerstein II. But when you see it it turns out it’s very Linklater, because it’s basically a one location play starring Ethan Hawke (like TAPE) and because it’s all about listening to a weirdo carry on and show off blabbing about all the random shit he’s obsessed with (like SLACKER or WAKING LIFE).
It’s basically a bittersweet hangout movie, spending a couple hours at a bar with Hart (Ethan Hawke, 24 HOURS TO LIVE) on March 31, 1943, opening night of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!. He ruminates on his past, his current failure, his dreams of how to continue, what’s going on with this war in Europe, and many of his opinions about many different things. Also he’s really excited because he thinks he’s in love with a Yale art student he’s been corresponding with who’s going to meet him here. But mostly he just tries to hold court and receive the attention he desires before Rodgers and friends show up to celebrate their triumph without him. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Scott, Bobby Cannavale, Ethan Hawke, Jonah Lees, Latham Gaines, Lorenz Hart, Margaret Qualley, Patrick Kennedy, Richard Linklater, Robert Kaplow, Simon Delaney
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Music | 9 Comments »
