Mark Mylod’s (What’s Your Number?, The Big White) The Menu is far from a movie that usually interests me. It’s exceptionally outrageously strange while still trying to come across as something meant to be believable. I’m also not much of a fan of dark humor. Films like American Psycho, This Is The End, Burn After Reading, Blazing Saddles, The Cabin in the Woods, Little Miss Sunshine, The Favourite, Birdman, In Bruges, Inglorious Bastards, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Being John Malkovich, Borat, A Simple Favor, Hail, Caesar!, Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, The Cable Guy, Jo Jo Rabbit, The Ref, Trainspotting, The Big Lebowski, Funny Games, The War of the Roses, Adaptation, Heathers, Rushmore, Death to Smoochy, Snatch, Knives Out, Observe and Report, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Game Night, or The Lobster don’t do it for me.
Category Archives: Comedy
On the Count of Three (2021)
The opening sequence of Jerrod Carmichael’s feature-length debut On the Count of Three shows a revolver being pointed inches from the face of Kevin (Christopher Abbott – It Comes At Night, First Man), a thirty-something man with swollen eyes and a twitching mouth that suggests that something terrible is about to happen to him. Then, the camera shifts to Val (Carmichael – Neighbors, The Disaster Artist), who has a similar firearm in his hand, pointing it at Kevin. Are these two men adversaries, attempting to make the other lower their gun with the threat to shoot?
Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
Everything Everywhere All At Once has slowly and quietly followed the established template of A24, a studio known for releasing groundbreaking, original, and independent movies. Through initial word of mouth, the co-directed film by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (who also co-wrote), Everything Everywhere All At Once, has become a movie that everyone has at least heard of, even if it has not been seen. Other nonconventional A24 films that had a lot of buzz around them and ended up earning Best Picture nominations in the last half dozen years include Minari (2020), Lady Bird (2017), and Moonlight (the Best Picture winner of 2016). While I appreciated all three movies, I only enjoyed Moonlight. I know that many will die on the sword for Lady Bird. I was not one of those people. A growing number seem willing to do the same for Everything Everywhere All At Once. Again, I am not one of them. I found the story incredibly uneven, the pace hurried, and the narration unreliable.
Don’t Look Up (2021)
Best Picture nominee? Don’t Look Up? Really? This movie had a wide December release. It earned less than one million dollars at the box office and was out of the theaters in under two weeks. Its 56% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes further suggests that this is different from a film one would deem to be selected by the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences as one of its ten best films of 2021. Yet (sigh), here we are. The biggest tragedy might be that this isn’t a bad film but is unfairly getting bashed for its affiliation with the other nine movies up for Best Picture in arguably the worst collection of films for any year.
The Worst Person in the World (2021)
First things first. The Worst Person in the World is a terrible name for a movie, especially a slightly heavy drama that centers around the indecisiveness of a 30-year-old woman named Julie (Renate Reinsve) and those affected by her actions. The title of this movie suggested it would be some stupid comedy. It took 30 seconds of the trailer to realize that my initial perceptions were entirely wrong and that I had to see this film as quickly as possible. I ended up watching it the next day. It was a terrific decision. Ignore the movie’s dumb movie title. You should see this movie too.