Zombie movies have always been an excellent outlet for social comment. George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) famously used the shambling masses to interrogate consumerism. Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002) traded on public fears over a viral outbreak – a … Continue reading REVIEW: Get the Hell Out (2020)
Nothing dates a film comedy like its representations of mental health. The Dream Team, a 1989 comedy directed by Howard Zieff, offers the 21st century viewer a choice: you can criticise it for its crass use of mental illness to generate … Continue reading REVIEW: The Dream Team (1989)
To my mind, Tropic Thunder (2008) is the boldest, strongest, and flat-out funniest comedy that Ben Stiller has directed. While it satirises an easy target – Hollywood excess – it does so in such a savage and unrelenting fashion that on some … Continue reading REVIEW: Tropic Thunder (2008)
Like most, I can do the arithmetic and see that Charlie Chaplin’s extended short Sunnyside is 102 years old. Despite this it just feels wrong. I grew up in the last quarter of the 20th century, and cinema was still heralded at that century’s … Continue reading REVIEW: Sunnyside (1919)
I am just going to go out on a limb here and guess that writer/director Steven Konstanski played with Masters of the Universe as a kid. It is not just the strong 1980s vibe of his film Psycho Goreman. It is in … Continue reading REVIEW: Psycho Goreman (2020)
Ben Stiller’s third directorial feature, Zoolander (2001), makes an even larger shift towards straight-up comedy. His cynical touches of social commentary remain, but the core narrative is much more exaggerated and deliberately silly than anything undertaken in The Cable Guy (1996). The … Continue reading REVIEW: Zoolander (2001)
In Gary Ross’ 1998 comic fantasy Pleasantville, two squabbling siblings are thrown into a 1950s television series where they are trapped with an array of old-fashioned parents, schoolmates, and other residents. While attempting to find a way back out to the … Continue reading REVIEW: Pleasantville (1998)
Noel Coward remains one of the 20th century’s most acclaimed playwrights, even if his light comedies have by-and-large fallen out of popular favour. His 1941 play Blithe Spirit is probably his most famous work, and was adapted into a film by director … Continue reading REVIEW: Blithe Spirit (2020)
In Ben Stiller’s second feature as director, Matthew Broderick plays an architect who moves into a new apartment – only to find himself tormented by the man (Jim Carrey) who comes to install his cable television. The Cable Guy made history at … Continue reading REVIEW: The Cable Guy (1996)
In the 1990s the Hollywood studios made tentatives steps towards making the ultimate “Generation X” film; something that could capture the zeitgeist of disaffected Americans in the 20s in a way that John Hughes’ popular teen dramas had captured their … Continue reading REVIEW: Reality Bites (1994)
