Latest
“It Stars C. Thomas Howell. No.” Why AI Gets Stuck in a LoopShould You Query or Self-Publish Your Memoir If You’re Not Famous?Judge the Writing, Not the Tool: What the AI Pile-Ons Get WrongThiago Ferreira: Thinkers, Not DoersYana Semova: Let AI Do the AdminLisa Hamilton-Smith: Unstoppable, AI AssistedSuperman Day: The $130 Contract Behind the CapeF. Scott Fitzgerald Day: The Masterpiece That FloppedRaymond Chandler Day: The Novelist Who Started at FiftyJohn Steinbeck Day: The Reporter Who Wrote the NovelInternational Translation Day: The Invisible AuthorsMaya Angelou Day: The Dare That Became a MemoirNational Podcast Day: The Interview Is the Raw MaterialKurt Vonnegut Day: The Book That Took Twenty YearsTell a Fairy Tale Day: The Stories Everybody EditedHarry Potter’s Birthday: The Book Twelve Publishers MissedHarper Lee Day: The Draft Her Editor Saw ThroughGene Roddenberry Day: The Pilot Who Pitched the StarsRoald Dahl Day: Six Pencils and a Grudge Against Grown-UpsInternational Literacy Day: The Readers Books LoseJack Kerouac Day: The Scroll and the Last AddressIan Fleming Day: Two Thousand Words a MorningStephen King Day: The Daily Two ThousandZora Neale Hurston Day: The Ear She TrainedFyodor Dostoevsky Day: The Novels Written Against the ClockEmily Dickinson Day: The Poems in the DrawerRobert E. Howard Day: The Texan Who Built ConanAlice’s Day: The Story Told on a Rowing BoatNational Library Lovers Month: The Building a Town Pays ForBack to the Future Day: The Script Where Everything Pays OffEncourage a Young Writer Day: The Adult Who Read the PagesElmore Leonard Day: Leave Out the Part Readers SkipElmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, and Which Ones I BreakShould Your Novel Have a Prologue? When a Cold Open Earns Its Place“People Who Use AI Deserve to Be Castrated”: When the Sentence Outruns the CrimeHow Famous Memoirs Were Really Written: What the Collaborators DidFlorida RoadkillThe Bell JarBeneath a Scarlet SkyOpen: An AutobiographyCampus BattlefieldLifeThe Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everyone Uses But No One ReadsIt Doesn’t Take a HeroThe MAGA DoctrineThe Sage of SagittariusDid I Ever Tell You This?: A MemoirPa’anAmerican SoldierMake Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World

Genre: Comedy

Funny on purpose. These stories run on timing, absurdity, and characters who take ridiculous situations completely seriously, which is where the best laughs live.

A street scene on a hot summer day in Brooklyn, with a pizzeria storefront and people gathered outside on the sidewalk andComedy

Do the Right Thing (1989) Review

Do the Right Thing (1989) rates 10 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. One block in Bedford-Stuyvesant on the hottest day of the year, a pizzeria, a wall of photographs, and a film that refuses to tell the audience…

READ MORE »

Tom Stoppard's screenplay about Shakespeare writing Romeo and Juliet, featuring the cast of the 1998 film in period costume.Comedy

Shakespeare in Love (1998) Review

Shakespeare in Love (1998) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A genuinely witty romantic comedy with a superb Tom Stoppard screenplay, which beat Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture through the most studied campaign in Academy history…

READ MORE »

Roberto Benigni in character as Guido, a man in 1940s Italy during the Holocaust narrative of Life is Beautiful. TITLE: LifeComedy

Life is Beautiful (1998) Review

Life is Beautiful (1998) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Roberto Benigni made a comedy about a father convincing his son that a concentration camp is a game, won Best Actor, and produced the most divisive film…

READ MORE »

Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump sitting on a bench with a box of chocolates, telling his life story to a stranger at a bus stop.Comedy

Forrest Gump (1994) Review

Forrest Gump (1994) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A technically remarkable film with a genuinely great performance at its center and a politics it has spent thirty years being argued about, which beat Pulp Fiction and…

READ MORE »

Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman sit in a car, the two lead actors from the 1989 film Driving Miss Daisy. TITLE: DrivingComedy

Driving Miss Daisy (1989) Review

Driving Miss Daisy (1989) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Two superb performances inside a film that covers twenty-five years of the American South and declines to examine any of it, in the year Do the Right…

READ MORE »

Christian Bale as Dick Cheney in a scene from the 2018 film Vice, wearing a dark suit.Biopic

Vice (2018) Review

Vice (2018) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Christian Bale gained around forty-five pounds and disappeared into Dick Cheney, in a film whose formal tricks keep interrupting a genuinely serious subject. Bale lost Best Actor to Rami…

READ MORE »

Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen sit in a 1960s car during their journey through the American South. TITLE: Green BookComedy

Green Book (2018) Review

Green Book (2018) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Two excellent performances inside a road film about a Black concert pianist and his white driver on a 1962 southern tour, which beat Roma for Best Picture and…

READ MORE »

Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson sit across from each other in a mediation room, both looking away, tension visibleComedy

Marriage Story (2019) Review

Marriage Story (2019) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Two people who like each other are put through a divorce by a legal process neither of them wanted to use, in a film that opens with both…

READ MORE »

Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie in a 1920s Hollywood scene from Damien Chazelle's film about the transition from silent to soundComedy

Babylon (2022) Review

Babylon (2022) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. It does not belong on a page called Modern Movie Slop and I am reviewing it here because that is where it was ranked. It is a three-hour failure…

READ MORE »