|
|
|
Stuart Saves His Family
: :Though it seems like a one-joke premise, this spinoff of Al Franken's Saturday Night Live character, self-help nerd Stuart Smalley, actually has some substance. And, in fact, it offers a message that wouldn't be out of place at an Al-Anon meeting (although with the laughs). Stuart, fired from his cable TV self-help show, goes home to resolve a family crisis. Dad (Harris Yulin) is an abusive drunk, Mom (Shirley Knight) is an enabler, Sis is an over-eater, and Brother has ...
|
|
|
Dr Strangelove
: essential video:Arguably the greatest black comedy ever made, Stanley Kubrick's cold war classic is the ultimate satire of the nuclear age. Dr. Strangelove is a perfect spoof of political and military insanity, beginning when General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), a maniacal warrior obsessed with 'the purity of precious bodily fluids,' mounts his singular campaign against Communism by ordering a squadron of B-52 bombers to attack the Soviet Union. The Soviets counter the threat with a so-called 'Doomsday Device,' ...
|
|
|
A New Leaf
: :Elaine May wrote, directed, and starred in this acidic comedy about a wealthy playboy (Walter Matthau) who discovers that he has nearly spent all of his fortune. Casting about for a solution to his money problems that won't actually involve work, he finds a desperate solution: He'll marry an heiress (May) for her fortune. The hitch: She's a social maladept ('The woman is feral,' Matthau growls). Indeed, Matthau finds marriage so intolerable that he decides there's only one course of ...
|
|
|
Buddy Buddy
: :Elaine May wrote, directed, and starred in this acidic comedy about a wealthy playboy (Walter Matthau) who discovers that he has nearly spent all of his fortune. Casting about for a solution to his money problems that won't actually involve work, he finds a desperate solution: He'll marry an heiress (May) for her fortune. The hitch: She's a social maladept ('The woman is feral,' Matthau growls). Indeed, Matthau finds marriage so intolerable that he decides there's only one course of ...
|
|
|
Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe
:Description:European chefs are being killed in the manner that their signature dishes are prepared.
|
|
|
Penn & Teller Get Killed
: :Penn and Teller burst onto the scene as part of the new-vaudeville wave of the mid 1980s. Riding high on the basis of a hit off-Broadway show, these two magicians--who poke fun at magic even as they pull off masterful illusions with a taste for blood--tried to transfer that sense of gruesome wonder to the big screen and missed the boat badly. Working with director Arthur Penn, they concocted a movie about themselves, in which Penn (the big one, who ...
|
|
|
Bad Santa
: :Instantly qualifying as a perennial cult favorite, Bad Santa is as nasty as it wants to be, and there's something to be said for comedy without compromise. The Coen brothers conceived the basic idea and served as executive producers, but it's director Terry Zwigoff (Crumb, Ghost World) who brings his unique affinity for losers and outcasts to the twisted tale of Willie T. Stokes (Billy Bob Thornton), a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed sexaholic safe-cracker who targets a different department store every ...
|
|
|
Folks
: :Instantly qualifying as a perennial cult favorite, Bad Santa is as nasty as it wants to be, and there's something to be said for comedy without compromise. The Coen brothers conceived the basic idea and served as executive producers, but it's director Terry Zwigoff (Crumb, Ghost World) who brings his unique affinity for losers and outcasts to the twisted tale of Willie T. Stokes (Billy Bob Thornton), a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed sexaholic safe-cracker who targets a different department store every ...
|
|
|
Death Becomes Her
: essential video:This 1992 black comedy by Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Back to the Future trilogy) features some of the most eye-popping special effects of the '90s in its story of a narcissistic star (Meryl Streep) who steals the husband (Bruce Willis) of another woman (Goldie Hawn) and continues her rivalry with her even after death. A magic potion keeps both women going despite the punishment of murderous bullets and fatal plunges, and the joke ...
|
|
|
Harold & Maude (Aniv)
: essential video:Black comedies don't come much blacker than this cult favorite from 1972, and they don't come much funnier, either. It seemed that director Hal Ashby was the perfect choice to mine a mother lode of eccentricity from the original script by Colin Higgins, about the unlikely romance between a death-obsessed 19-year-old named Harold (Bud Cort) and a life-loving 79-year-old widow named Maude (Ruth Gordon). They meet at a funeral, and Maude finds something oddly appealing about Harold, urging ...
|
|