humour
Kieron Tyler
After the initial wave of exhilaration which comes with experiencing the latest of director Wes Anderson’s fanciful creations wears off, the most striking aspect of The Grand Budapest Hotel is its formal compositions. The framing and centring are as strictly regimented as Alain Resnais’ Last Year in Marienbad and the palette is as impressive as Nicolas Winding Refn's more recent Only God Forgives.Anderson must have approached each scene with a ruler in hand, a protractor to ensure symmetry and a swatch of colour samples to ensure one tone complements another. Once that's become familiar, it Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Melissa McCarthy has been one of the decade's most notable comic finds. Although she's been plugging away for years on TV, as a stand-up, in sketch troupe the Groundlings and in various supporting roles, it was Bridesmaids and The Heat which brought her much deserved attention - including an Oscar nomination for her part in the former. More than just comic fodder, these characters were tough (but sensitive), smart and sisterly women railing against preconceptions and prejudice. In the altogether less fabulous Tammy she once again teams up with her husband Ben Falcone - best known as her air Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Despite the profusion of slapstick jappery, explosions, a whimsical veneer and cartoonish portrayals of its characters, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is not a film aimed at children. The Swedish blockbuster also includes castration, explicit violence, death by being locked in a freezer and near-the-knuckle racial categorisation. Balancing the picaresque and the macabre, the film ends up as neither one nor the other, or a harmonious hybrid. Although intermittently funny, it is not the sum of its parts.The 100-Year-Old Man (Hundraåringen som klev ut Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
It’s not unusual for Jon Favreau to go small, despite his reputation for the big hits such as Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and Elf. There was the much-touted squib Cowboys & Aliens alongside the nifty minnows of Made and Very Bad Things. Favreau loves acting and making movies so much that he’s a realist when things go wrong. Or right, in the case of his latest Chef, which one reviewer strangely called "shallow", a word that would only apply if you expected something Bergmanesque from a juicy romp through the world of a professional chef trying to get back his magic meal-making mojo.Favreau stars Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
There are all sorts of companies and shows out there that claim to “rock” the ballet, or otherwise shake up, take down or reinvent an art form that, they imply, is (breathe it softly, the dirty word) elitist, or at least irrelevant. Few, I’d imagine, perform this operation with anything like the skill and intelligence of Dada Masilo, whose 2010 version of Swan Lake opened the lively short smorgasbord season that Sadler’s Wells are calling their Sampled festival. Masilo’s reinvention works because she understands ballet, and not just its conventions – though she skewers those with Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Twelve minutes into the Icelandic film Of Horses and Men something occurs on screen which was obviously going to happen, but actually seeing it happen is astonishing. It’s something which would normally either occur off screen or be alluded to. Of Horses and Men has many such uncomfortable moments. It’s also funny, heart-warming and poignant – a one-off.Of Horses and Men is set and filmed in rural Iceland. About the residents of a valley, their loves and their symbiotic relationship with their equine companions, it draws parallels between the behaviour of horse and human. What the Read more ...
emma.simmonds
"We're too old for this shit," quips Jenko (Channing Tatum), quoting one of the greats of weary screen policing - Lethal Weapon's Murtaugh - in response to his latest nonsensically spectacular brush with death. "We started off too old for this shit," shoots back his partner Schmidt (Jonah Hill). Welcome to 22 Jump Street: a film that wears a lack of originality not just on its sleeve but as its whole outfit. Its predecessor 21 Jump Street was the big screen remake that promised little but delivered in belly laughs. But surely a sequel is stretching the joke too thin?Thankfully this turns out Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Many films fuse humour with horror and many of those fail to be accomplished in either genre. Bringing fun to the scary often results in a clunkiness which neither raises laughs or goosebumps. The worst example might be the utterly awful Bloodbath at the House of Death, a 1984 film which teamed all-round showbiz eccentric Kenny Everett with veteran actor Vincent Price. What Price thought as he navigated his way through this stinker is not a matter of record, but he may have ruefully cast his mind back a decade to the contrastingly wonderful Theatre of Blood. Released in 1973, it is one of the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Two potential obstacles need navigating while considering Frank. First, despite what it initially seems, this is not an account of the life and times of Frank Sidebottom, the giant-headed character created by maverick musician Chris Sievey. Second, the attitude towards mental health issues exhibited by those close to Frank in the film makes for awkward viewing. Beyond these health warnings, the presence of Michael Fassbender and Maggie Gyllenhaal in this eccentric, touching film makes it more than a curiosity.As Frank, despite being masked by the disconcerting, big-eyed, blank-faced papier- Read more ...
emma.simmonds
It might be putting it bluntly, but hell - American rom-coms didn't always suck. The screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s made bickering artful and aspirational and Woody Allen added his own neurotic spin in the 70s. Now the commercial end of the genre makes fools of us all with its desperate women, bland men and rigid, asinine formula. These films are an insult to the intelligent, ambitious or independent, and are at best a guilty pleasure.Modern rom-coms might be a joke but unfortunately they're not a joke with legs, as David Wain's Scary Movie-esque spoof They Came Together shows us over Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
Debut writer-director Gillian Robespierre strikes the perfect balance between humour and humanism in this New York set comedy about unplanned pregnancy and abortion which sees stand-up comedian Donna Stern (Jenny Slate) get dumped and fired from her job at Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books in quick succession. At her lowest ebb she engages in a drunken one night stand with Max (Jake Lacey), a guy she meets in a Brooklyn bar, and we get to witness how she deals with the consequences of her actions whilst also trying to get to grips with the world around her.Donna's comedy act is all Read more ...
emma.simmonds
"I first tasted semen when I was seven-years-old." Those are the first words spoken in Calvary, the superb second film from writer-director John Michael McDonagh. They're delivered by an unseen confessor addressing Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson). The priest's response: "It's certainly a startling opening line." Well, quite. Evidently fucking with us from the off, Calvary wants to shock and is inclined to nod and wink at its own machinations. However, what might at first seem like a movie that's merely incendiary and irreverent in nature gradually reveals itself capable of considerably Read more ...