Tag: comedy
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American Pie (1999)
American Pie wasn’t the first sex comedy to up the raunch and gross-out levels before Tom Green pushed them to their apex (nadir?) in Freddy Got Fingered. But it’s a milestone in teen sex comedies, sliding them a little further out of the Stone Age – as represented by entries in the ‘80s – to…
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Thanksgiving (2023)
I just saw Thanksgiving, the new slasher film by Eli Roth, and it was fun. Featuring a great cold open wherein a Black Friday sale leads to a deadly rampage of greed in a small town, we cut to one year later as a slasher in a Pilgrim hat and mask starts insisting on the…
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Cat Person (2023)
I just saw Cat Person and it was good. Based on the short story of the same name by Kristen Roupenian, which went viral in 2017 for its exploration of gender dynamics as per modern dating, it’s a cleverly constructed black comedy and psychological thriller about an awkward flirtation that ends up going horribly wrong.…
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Horror Classic Quickies: Friday the 13th (1980) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Arguably the true first of the slasher boom that would help to define ‘80s horror cinema, for better or worse, this is the film that codified and thereby effectively birthed the sub-genre without even meaning to. Director Sean S Cunningham had no intention to make any sort of inspirational piece, he was just ripping off…
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The Blackening (2023)
I just saw The Blackening and it was good. Based on a comedy sketch, it’s a satirical slasher film starring a black cast of actors playing former college friends who reunite at a cabin in the woods, but not before a couple of them make a rest stop at the proverbial rustic gas station run…
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Haunted Mansion (2023)
Based on a theme park ride, Disney’s Haunted Mansion is one of their few live-action films in a while to not be a bastardisation of one of their animated classics. It also has a lively sense of humour and real energy to its storytelling, harkening back to the first Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse…
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)
Co-written by Seth Rogan, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is a surprisingly fun and effective cartoon feature, drawn in the kinetic, impressionistic style of the SpiderVerse movies and scored with a thumping mix of modern and classic pop standards. It seems that with this combination studios have re-energised comic-book films to a super-heroic degree,…
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Barbie (2023)
I saw the Barbie movie and it was… fine? I’m not really sure what I was expecting and was probably expecting too much. This is really a movie for little girls and women trying to get in touch with their inner little girl, so I feel bad criticising it for things like plot and nuance,…
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Asteroid City (2023)
I just saw Asteroid City by Wes Anderson and it was great. It took a little while to win me over and it’s possibly too mannered and esoteric to be widely beloved, but it tells a very simple story with a simple message at its core and is one of the sweetest, sunniest comedies to…
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Beau is Afraid (2023)
I just saw Beau is Afraid and it was overlong, intriguing, infuriating, and kind of unique. It’s possible to see it as a gigantic self-indulgence with little respect for the audience’s time and the same contempt for them that you see in a lot of contemporary art. And it is that. (There were walkouts in…
I Just Saw 