The Personal Recommendation Hall of Fame V: Comedy Edition

I just finished watching Auntie Mame (1958). Directed by Morton DaCosta, the film stars Rosalind Russell as the eccentric and free spirited title character whose ten year old orphaned nephew comes to live with her. It was nominated for 6 Academy Awards, including best picture and best actress. I found the film to be charming and amusing, but not laugh out loud funny. Russell is wonderful here and elevates the film. The screenplay is well written with some clever and witty lines. I really liked the cinematography and the way the colour really popped. I felt that the film was overlong though and could have been more interesting if it was edited down a bit. There is a good story in here, but it didn't need to be 2 hours and 23 minutes. I had been meaning to see this film for a while now, so I'm glad someone nominated it for me and I finally got around to watching it.

Have not seen Auntie Mame yet.

Logan Lucky (2017)


Part of why I didn't see Logan Lucky was the trailer it looked dumb comedy about dumb people. I don't like movies like that, I was very surprised when I actually watched the film how subdued it was. Pretty much every joke in the film is in the trailer the rest of the film is a crime story that's very well told.


I am slowly coming around to Channing Tatum being a solid underrated lead actor and he was very good in this. Adam Driver and Daniel Craig on the other hand they were just okay. This might actually be the worst performance I've seen from Driver in a major motion picture and it's not a bad performance.


My biggest issue with the film is that it feels like a Coen brothers film without the great visuals and darkness. This is a film that keeps it pretty light it's an Ocean's 11 type film with thick southern accents.

I should watch Auntie Mame for the comedy countdown. I never heard of Lucky Logan. Then again I haven't heard of most of these movies.

I thought Lucky Logan was a pretty good comedy, and that Channing Tatum is a pretty good comedic actor - I liked him in the 21/22 Jump Street movies as well.

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Visitor Q is a shock feature from Takashi Miike that has every intention of shocking audiences with various taboos and offensive behaviour. If you're easily offended, then this film will certainly offend you - and if you're not easily offended, but still get offended when something is taken a little too far, then this film will certainly offend you. It might even offend you if you consider yourself completely open minded and impossible to offend. Takashi Miike will find a way. Despite including what I consider to be nearly every single taboo there is, it's a light-hearted film that's obviously not meant to be taken seriously. I don't know if that makes this even worse in a way, but I thought parts were genuinely funny, and I don't mind being occasionally shocked. Growing up I had some curiosity inside of me as to how far a film could really go, and sought out various films that were notorious in their way. They might be serious and have something to say or they might simply exist to offend and spread by word of mouth, but they have a history of their own and they're subject of many a film book.

At the heart of Visitor Q is a family of four consisting of a mother and father, a daughter and a son. It's a dysfunctional family in turmoil. The mother, Keiko (Shungiku Uchida) and daughter, Miki (Fujiko) have both resorted to prostitution for various reasons. Keiko is addicted to heroin, and in Miki there resides a deep well of hopelessness. The father, Kiyoshi (Ken'ichi Endô) is a journalist whose career is on the decline, looking for a great story that will restore his esteem amongst his colleagues. His son, Takuya (Jun Mutô) is bullied by his peers and older children - and Takuya takes his frustrations out on his mother simply because this is the one person who will not fight back. This family is about to become host to a mysterious visitor which will alter the dynamics of this family, but who is he? Where has he come from, and why has he suddenly appeared?

The mysterious visitor and the effect this visitation has on members of a household has been a recurring theme throughout cinema - from Jean Renoir's Boudu Saved from Drowning to Pasolini's Teorema and even Paul Mazursky's Down and Out in Beverly Hills. For some reason I'm also reminded of the effect Rasputin had on members of the Tsar's family in early 20th Century Russia. There is often some sexual element, which is certainly present here and something almost mystical about these visitors. I'm not sure however, how much thought and meaning Takashi Miike ascribes to his interloper. This visitor (played by Kazushi Watanabe) talks in an almost condescendingly way to Takuya, so much so that you can't really be sure if what he's saying is a direct repudiation to what this boy does to his mother - conveyed by words dripping in sarcasm - or actual encouragement. He has the most effect on Keiko however - after he seduces her she's a changed woman, and his touch goes so far as to influence her bodily functions (her breasts begin to produce milk.)

It's with Kiyoshi that he spends much of his time with, and he aids and abets various crimes that this man commits. None of the characters in Visitor Q behave in a normal, rational manner, but it's Kiyoshi who is the barking mad member of this familial group. If there is something horrible and offensive going on in this film, it's usually Kiyoshi who is leading the charge into hell. It's this journalist who has decided that the plight of the youth in Japan that would make the most prestigious story to cover, but the footage he ends up recording on his camcorder always ends up being something horrifying. Either it's something happening to him - punishment inflicted by a group of wayward youths - or it's something he's doing to someone else. Aside from that, Kiyoshi eyes his son's bullying as newsworthy and worthwhile, so he records it while being not in the least interested in helping the poor boy. He takes the kind of stance a videographer in the wild would have when not interfering in nature. You can imagine much of his footage being played across courtrooms in Japan - with Kiyoshi in the dock.

This is without even mentioning that Kiyoshi is involved with the rape and murder of his colleague, who had the temerity to criticize his journalistic practices. This woman, also Kiyoshi's mistress, is called Asako, and the actress playing her - Shôko Nakahara - had the toughest gig you could ever imagine, for reasons I won't even go into in any detail (I've tried, but the descriptions sounded so lurid I've decided to leave it up to anyone who's curious to go see for themselves.) It all leads to a few moments Visitor Q is famous for, and indeed Ken'ichi Endô is successful in delivering his lines in a comedic manner despite the awful debauchery that goes on (I can almost sense that a lot of it is unprompted, and delivered in the way they are because of the ridiculous situations his character is faced with.) If you make something silly enough, does it dispel what would otherwise be wrong? I remember in class once, we were given the assignment of creating a product - so I got a tin can and invented a tinned food you can feed to your dog and/or your baby. It was disqualified.

While first writing a review of Visitor Q I included descriptions of all of the lurid and shocking things which occur in it, and it was a terrible review - even after I had edited it to soften the impact. While pondering that very fact, my thoughts drifted to Takashi Miike and this film's screenwriter, Itaru Era. How do you handle the criticism that's bound to come your way when you make a shock film like this one? Do you have second thoughts when the editing is nearly complete and the film gets closer to being released? If you do, are the second thoughts a crushing weight, causing anxiety because you're about to show this film to people, some of whom will be displeased and angry with what you've done? I'm almost afraid to admit that I laughed at and enjoyed a lot of Visitor Q - although I can add the disclaimer that a few parts made me excruciatingly uncomfortable and some did indeed shock me.

This cheapie was produced for only $70,000 and was the sixth and final part in a series of films under the 'Love Cinema' moniker. It had a very brief cinematic release for marketing purposes - but was really meant to be a straight to video affair. Something like the Dogme 95 movement, but without so many restrictions, these films were experimenting with the cheaper method of production and possibilities that digital video afforded filmmakers. When you add Takashi Miike's penchant for including discoveries he happens upon in making his films (for example - Shungiku Uchida had just given birth and was lactating when filming commenced, so Miike used this in the final film) with the digital video's clearness, it gives the film the feeling of a documentary or found footage film - with Kiyoshi's own digital filming during the movie blending and being included. As a film that's intended to shock, the whole veneer is pretty real.

The interesting thing that screenwriter Itaru Era puts together in a broader aspect here is Visitor Q's intention to harm this dysfunctional family actually healing it. This piece of information is directly imparted to us. We start with a family that has all of it's members in strife : the daughter has resorted to prostitution, the son is being bullied and is angry, the father's work in journalism is failing and the mother is a drug addict, battered and depressed. By the time Visitor Q leaves, the father has confronted the bullies (and killed them), the mother is a new woman and has found joy in her domesticity and the daughter has returned home - brutally convinced to do so by Kazushi Watanabe's Visitor Q, but happy in the end. What preceded all of that is a violent shake-up delivered by the eponymous visitor, restoring harmony to the family unit (in Japan - the uchi) which can be further extrapolated to the nation itself. It all ties into the opening remarks of the film, delivered by Miki ,about hopelessness the youth of Japan feel - it takes an outside force to realign what has gone awry.

Takashi Miike regular Hideo Yamamoto was director of photography, using digital video and Kôji Endô composed the music - both performing the same tasks they had for Miike's 1999 film Audition. Editor Yasushi Shimamura was similarly a Takashi Miike regular and worked on the aforementioned film. The overall crew on this film, though, was considerably smaller than on his more well-known films - but he wasn't afraid to be inventive with much smaller budgets for direct-to-video releases. As far as shock cinema goes, it's a worthy addition and the low budget doesn't take anything away from what this film intends to be. It's absurdity will simply disarm you from feeling much outrage at what's happening onscreen, although I must have been voicing considerable surprise at times, because everyone around me wanted to know what I was watching. The behaviour of the father (played by Ken'ichi Endô) in this film is so bizarre it can't help but make one laugh - he's the comedic central part of the entire movie.

When it comes to really standing back and judging how good the film is, it's not an easy question to answer. It relies a lot on the shock value of what happens in it, but provides a few laughs as well - helped along by the sheer weirdness of it's characters. It's like a really good addition to a lower kind of category of film - something you can't compare with films with more artistic merit or production values. It was certainly memorable - and I admit that I've never seen a few aspects of what it shows in a film before. I laughed out loud, sometimes because the film was genuinely funny, and sometimes out of plain embarrassment to be watching it. I enjoyed it. It shows a family rising out of the depths of despair into a kind of rebirth, and that made me feel good, despite the fact they should all probably be arrested and jailed. I'm happy I got to watch it - even if I recoiled and probably swore. It took me back to my youth, when I'd seek out cinematic taboos and shock classics.

I will have a few reviews coming up. Will write one up for Harry and Tonto soon

Schizopolis (Steven Soderbergh, 1996)

Damn, this is pretty much exactly what I asked for and it did absolutely nothing for me. Beginning to think that film is simply an outdated medium for humour at this point. Actually, I think this would have hit for me a lot more maybe 5-10 years ago, when I found the particularly stiff approach to absurdism ala Quentin Dupieux more appealing (though his work still coasts by on fond memories for me) and as a result I'm spending a lot of the runtime here thinking "this should be funny" while nothing even remotely moves the needle. Unfortunately I can say the exact same thing about the aesthetic. It should really, really be hitting for me, a lot more than the humour and it still just kind of elicits no feelings from me. I will say though, the music is extremely stupid (complimentary) and its probably the only standout element. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this film but it left me completely cold.

Logan Lucky was good but not a movie that would stay with me. I also liked Vistor Q, but it was more weird than disturbing to me which wasn't what I was hoping for. Never heard of Schizopolis.

Harry and Tonto


Harry is an old man who feels like life is changing suddenly moving too fast. Long since widowed, he lives alone with his pet cat, his constant companion. When his building is torn down, he is forcibly removed, and forced to move in with one of his sons.

He doesn’t connect well with his sons family, with the exception of his nephew who has taken a vow of silence. Shortly after his friends death, he realized his time is also drawing near and decided to take up one last adventure. He decides to travel to Chicago to visit his daughter.

So we get a road movie comedy film about a man who isn’t sure what he will do when he gets there. He just knows he has to travel. Something he isn’t done in years. Along the way he picks up young girl who is a runaway, and visits an ex lover.

It isn’t what happens that’s important but why. He’s an old man with an old cat who has lived a life of comfort, and routine it seems. So he decides to break that routine. Along the way there is some musings about life, and some reminiscing about the past.

It’s a sweet film, funny at times, poignant at others. Mazursky is more interested in dialogue here then letting certain scenes linger long enough for us to soak them in. The visit with his ex lover, suffering from Alzheimer’s, ends a bit too abruptly, as it cuts back to the road as I’d nothing Happened. So too is the blossoming romance between the aforementioned runaway and his silent nephew, who has traveled to Chicago to see him. It just happens without any explanation or build up. Or his conversation with his daughter. There’s tension between them that isn’t really explained.

There’s many chance meetings with strangers along the way, some of them funny, but really, it’s the last 10 minutes that stick with you. And when it does, it made me yell WHY WHY WHY?! THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A COMEDY AND NOW I’M SAD AND NOW I’M GOING TO CUDDLE WITH MY CATS!! Ugh.

But really, it is a funny movie and and it’s sad and sweet and really hot shone for me in light of losing my mother last month and my own father trying to make up for “lost time” with us. I found myself thinking of that watching this films.

Really good film that has the potential to be better upon a second viewing.

This is what happens when a great theatrical production is adapted into a film and everything is done just as it should be - although Arsenic and Old Lace is far from a perfect film, Frank Capra's steady direction and some great performances produced an enjoyable comedy that has been well remembered. The play itself is a popular one, and many a community theatre will invite you to come watch them butcher it. Written in 1939 by Joseph Kesselring (sounds like plans for an invasion), it debuted on Broadway in 1941 and production on the film began that same year. Casting was somewhat contentious - Cary Grant is sometimes considered to have been the wrong choice for Mortimer Brewster, and Boris Karloff was unable to replicate on film what he had on stage, the producers of the latter would not allow him for fear losing their star performer would drive people away. The story was inspired by Amy Archer-Gilligan, a woman who poisoned many of her boarders for their pensions.

The film starts out with Mortimer Brewster (Grant) and Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane) getting married at a registrar's office and returning to see Mortimer's Aunts, Martha Brewster (Jean Adair) and Abby Brewster (Josephine Hull), who live with Mortimer's brother "Teddy" (John Alexander) - a man who believes he's Theodore Roosevelt. While there, Mortimer happens to spot a dead body in a window seat, and after initially thinking his mentally ill brother is the culprit he finds out his Aunts have poisoned the man after they confess - in fact, there are 11 more bodies buried in the cellar. The Aunts have been killing old lonely men looking for lodgings - out of mercy, bless them. While out trying to get Teddy institutionalized and sort out the mess, Mortimer's other brother, Jonathan (Raymond Massey) arrives after a long absence, with Dr. Herman Einstein (Peter Lorre) in tow - Jonathan is a black sheep of the family, a violent, murderous criminal who has a body of his own to try and get rid of. It will be a hectic, crazy night for all involved.

The stage is set for some anarchy, comedy and all the various tropes you'd come to expect from such a story adapted from the stage. The film sticks fairly closely to the theatrical version, and as such the main dining/lounge room set is used for most of the action - although at the start the film takes us for a very short detour to a baseball game, and the registrar's office where Mortimer and Elaine are trying to get married. His Aunts live near a graveyard, and as such this outdoor portion is sometimes used - a large set was built to include the inside and outside for filming. Aside from that we only get to see the offices of Sunnydale Psychiatric Institution and the outside of Elaine's residence where she stays with her father, Reverend Harper (Grant Mitchell). Oscar-nominated art director Max Parker, a veteran from the silent era, was used in production design. Other rooms in the house - all connected to the same large set - had scenes filmed in them, but many of these scenes weren't used in the final cut. We do get to see the Aunts working in the kitchen briefly, but we're always quickly directed back onto that main stage.

Something that will jump out (almost literally) at you is the performance of Cary Grant, of which it's sometimes hard to tell if it becomes this film's Achilles heel or crowning glory - he overplays and overacts to the point of absurdity, making some of Jerry Lewis's most kinetic performances look restrained in comparison. Grant was particularly unhappy with this aspect of his own acting in this film, and blamed Frank Capra for his insistence on him overdoing things - but if the production had not of had the bad fortune of nearing it's end around the time the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor then there would have been reshoots, and Capra would have supervised and guided the editing process in order to even out the tone of Grant's performance. As it was, Capra joined the army and as such wrapped up Arsenic and Old Lace in haste (ironically, since it would be over 2 years before the film would be eventually released to the general public.) I enjoyed some of Cary Grant's buffoonery, and some I felt went over the mark.

Editing the film was Daniel Mandell, who won Oscars for editing The Pride of the Yankees, The Best Years of Our Lives and The Apartment, while being nominated for The Little Foxes and Witness for the Prosecution - a big league figure in the industry. Director of Photography was Sol Polito, who was nominated for Oscars as the cinematographer of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Sergeant York and Captains of the Clouds - he's another figure who began his career in the very early days of cinema. Frequent changes in camera angle give the feeling that this was filmed with more than one camera on set, and we keep to the characters, who fill out the frame and give a different perspective than one would have when they go see the story on stage. Being very theatrical, there's little music involved apart from what introduces the film and sends it off, but during moments when there's no dialogue (such as when Jonathan and Dr. Einstein creep around the house) we get some atmospheric, moody enhancement - it was provided by Max Steiner, an industry titan who was nominated for 20 Oscars, winning them for his work on The Informer, Now, Voyager and Since You Went Away. Steiner provided the music on such films as Gone With the Wind and Casablanca.

Brothers Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein (Oscar winners due to their work on Casablanca) adapted the play for the screen, producing more laughs from me than sighs (occasionally, a joke or two doesn't work - or has gone stale) and overall, keeping the spirit of the play alive. It rounds out a team of filmmakers with tremendous experience and industry recognition. It's a film that lives in that netherworld between the purely theatrical and cinematic, and depends much more on it's screenplay and characters. I loved seeing Peter Lorre as Dr. Einstein, he has a very unique screen presence, but it's a shame we didn't get Karloff as Jonathan - it would have lent that extra meaning to all of the lines in the film where people exclaim that Jonathan looks exactly like the famous actor. Some of the play's original cast did make it into the film however, such as Jean Adair, Josephine Hull and John Alexander, who I thought was very comically effective as the unbalanced brother screaming charge every time he climbed the staircase.

Despite being shot in 1941, the film didn't have a general release until 1944 due to an agreement with the play's producers, that the film would be withheld until the play's run ended - and Arsenic and Old Lace's popularity had performances running for a considerable time. Before it's general release, Frank Capra in England noticed soldiers yelling "Charge!" in the manner of "Teddy" Brewster, and he guessed correctly that people in the service were being shown the film before members of the general public, who would have to wait. At the moment I feel a familiarity with all of that - various release times and methods being juggled around during the pandemic as they are. In the years since there have been radio and television adaptations of the play, one of which managed to give us Boris Karloff in his usual part (and Tony Randall as Mortimer Brewster.) There have been Broadway revivals of the play, and it reappears on all manner of stages in all countries. This 1944 film will be many people's most immediate gateway into this murderous (yet, nicely murderous - very kind) world of Mortimer's Aunts.

I liked Arsenic and Old Lace - and can see how great it would have been to see back in it's day. It's dated somewhat (not as dated as some other films have been, so it's aged well) and Cary Grant's performance is indeed a little over the top (it works for him at times, and detracts from the performance at others.) At least it gave me an opportunity to see Cary Grant completely let loose, as he rarely plays things to the hilt like that. They missed an opportunity when the play's producers refused to release Karloff for the film. I thought it was genuinely funny most of the time, and obviously put together and crafted well in most aspects. Seeing the film made me interested in the play - but considering how closely this adaptation follows it, and the fact that some actors from the play ended up playing in the film, I feel like I have a good impression of what it must have been like. A great job was done in translating what was good about that play into a cinematic form where it can come across clearly, in a jocular way. Joseph Kesselring originally intended to write a serious play about the serial murder of men seeking lodgings from kindly old ladies - but when old ladies run around killing people there's just something so off-key about it, and this is inevitably where we end up.

Hey, finally two comedies I've actually seen. I liked Harry and Tonto maybe I even reviewed it here? I'm too lazy to look Like a lot of comedies it has it's focus on drama and melancholiness...In preparing for the comedy countdown I'm starting to wonder what comedy means? Does a comedy have to make me laugh to be a great comedy or can it be like Harry and Tonto? It's going to be hard to make my comedy ballot of the countdown!

Arsenic and Old Lace, I'm a huge fan of really old Hollywood films and a big fan of Cary Grant too, so I should love this film but I don't...The problem for me is that the threat of death by slow torture when Cary is captured by Raymond Massey is done to seriously for me to find funny. But everyone else I know loves this film and I see it's rated 7.9 on IMDB.

I was a big fan when I first saw Arsenic and Old Lace, not so much the last time.

Loved Harry and Tonto!

Haven't Seen/Heard of
Schizopolis
Visitor Q
Sunny
World's Greatest Dad

Haven't and probably should see
Beerfest - HUGE fan of Super Troopers though I haven't seen ST 2 and was so-so on their second film, Club Dread so I should try to check this out.
Player is a film that I've been on the fence about since it came out, leaning toward hopping off and checking it out.
Harry and Tonto is another I should and haven't, though the sad aspect kept me from doing so. I enjoy Beautiful or Romantic Sadness, but Loss and Hardships -- not so much.

Have Seen
Auntie Mame VERY much enjoy this precisely because of Rosalind Russell.
I have only seen Thank You For Smoking once and remember enjoying it.
It took a LONG time to finally see Hedwig and the Angry Inch till @Miss Vicky nominated it in an HoF, and this was a great film filled with comedy and music beautifully interwoven.
I have and continue to LOVE Arsenic & Old Lace. It sits in the echelon of favorite Capra Films for me. And yes, Grant overacts, but it works for me, and I adore the two aunts and having Peter Lorre as Mortimer's Doctor. It's a wonderfully charming theatrical bit of serial murders, to be sure.
Logan Lucky is one I own and watch occasionally. A Coen Brothers knock-off well-done crime heist with comedic turns that I always enjoy.
Kung Fu Hustle is a Countless Rewatch Member in very High Standing with a guaranteed spot for the Countdown for me. A high-ranking film that makes me laugh every time throughout. Stephen Chow goes beyond the usual parody to a love letter to not only Kung Fu Films but several old-time films in general. The physical comedy and dialogue hit the mark for me beautifully.

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What I actually said to win MovieGal's heart:
- I might not be a real King of Kinkiness, but I make good pancakes

~Mr Minio

I just finished watching Four Lions (2010). Directed by Christopher Morris, this British satirical dark comedy is about a group of aspiring suicide bombers. The film works surprisingly well. In spite of the seriousness of the subject, there are some genuinely funny moments. I thought the actors did a good job and the film humanises the characters. Four Lions is a bold and clever film that engages the viewer while telling the story in an interesting way. There were a lot of ways a film like this could go wrong, but the director and cast manage to avoid potential pitfalls. This was a good nomination for me.

Hmmm, for some reason I thought Four Lions was a kids movie with Michael Caine.

You might be thinking of Secondhand Lions from 2003.

Ahhhh yes

I just finished watching Zero Effect (1998). Directed by Jake Kasdan, the film stars Bill Pullman as a Sherlock Holmes type of detective named Daryl Zero who is hired to investigate a case involving. Ben Stiller plays his assistant and the supporting cast includes Ryan O'Neal and Kim Dickens. I thought Pullman did a good job. Stiller was alright and Dickens was fine too, but both have been better elsewhere. I think they could have done more with O'Neal though. The story was okay, but could have been more interesting. I didn't find the film very funny though. I still liked it though. This was Jake Kasdan's first film and I have now seen 7 of the 8 films he has directed. I would rank this 5th in his filmography out of what I have seen. Not one of his best, but not bad at all.

I have now completed this hall. I can say with no exaggeration and in complete sincerity that this hall has changed my life forever. We have grown closer together and have become like an extended, dysfunctional hilarious family of jokers.