I always wave her off and say “aww shucks, that ain’t me, but that’s awful kind of you to say” without telling her that I secretly maintain a very robust Letterboxd profile with the username TubiAppreciator that I treat as my very own local newspaper.

And, like any good (pretend) publication, I try to stay on top of things.

So, I saw 165 new releases in 2025.

Some got five stars (ten movies to be exact). One got ½ star (you can see that review here).

Five movies I reviewed received one star.

They’re an odd bunch.

One’s a legacy sequel to a remake that I loved, two were helmed by famous directors, one was a critically-acclaimed documentary and a fifth was an under-the-radar streamer with a solid cast.

Essentially, they’re a hodgepodge of movies I had high hopes for that all let me down.

Ho hum.

So, in honor of my grandma who thinks I should be a film critic, here are the five movies released in 2025 that I gave one star on Letterboxd (along with somewhat snarky snippets from my full reviews, which are linked if you want to read the whole thing).

Freakier Friday (watched Feb. 27, 2026): Sure, some of the gags are fun (all credit goes to Vanessa Bayer and X Mayo) but repeating the exact same story from the first go-run with needlessly complicated plot mechanics is depressing and a bit demeaning to the audience. Let these characters do anything else! Give them a “Groundhog Day!” Just don’t make us watch a tired “new” version of Stephen Tobolowsky getting chewed out or the olds acting young.

Think that’s the last sequel/reboot I’m going to watch for a while.

Eleanor The Great (watched May 6, 2026): Similar to “Twinless” but so much staler. One was one of my favorite movies of 2025, the other (this movie) is near the bottom of the barrel. I’m sorry, “Eleanor the Great” but “Eleanor the Lame” is a far more fitting title.

Will be interested to see if ScarJo will return to the director’s chair after this one.

Ella McCay (watched May 13, 2026) The movie thinks it’s cheeky and naughty but the effect is mostly cringe-inducing. Would only recommend to my worst enemies.

The Perfect Neighbor (watched July 1, 2026) Not exactly cinematic or dramatic, more infuriating; I perked up most for a local news story built into the movie. That’s how thirsty I was for anything resembling professional footage.

Anyway, here’s what I texted a friend when they asked about the movie:

Hard to follow until the last 20 minutes, which is pretty potent stuff…but until then I was bored out of my mind. All body cam footage of people in stressful situations. Felt like a long, painful TikTok. I think it’s one of those movies if you’re writing for a professional publication you have to say “this is an important film,” which is true. I learned about stand your ground and police interrogation but it’s a challenging watch in that you’re essentially sitting through surveillance footage for two hours trying to piece together a story. I appreciate that the team played with the form and didn’t spoonfeed us with talking heads but, man, did I ever perk up when they cut to a local news segment. I was like “finally! Something watchable!”

Anniversary (watched Aug. 7, 2026) Not for me. I have a lot of problems with this movie yet my biggest gripe (other than the constant serious speechifying) was that I wish “Anniversary” wasn’t a metaphor; the movie would have been that much more powerful if it was about people in our current situation.

That’s all for this week. Also, I wanted to say sorry for writing “Eleanor The Lame.” I should be above horrible put-downs like that. Sadly, I’m not.

Like a rock,

Matt

PS: Please watch my short film “We Regret To Inform You” that I just put online. I guarantee you’ll love it or your money back!

PPS: To be clear, the movie is free so no money will exchange hands.

PPPS: It’s kinda funny when you write PPPS. That’s just so many P’s.

PPPPS: OK, I promise, this is the last one.

PPPPPS: Just kidding, this is the last one.

They spend months — nay, years (!) — working on a project until that fateful day when they realize the film festival cycle has dried up and it’s time to finally put the movie out to pasture on YouTube.

In my case, this happened with my 2023 short film We Regret To Inform You that I co-directed with Aaron Bryan.

Like everyone else in the industry, I had high hopes at first. I thought THIS was the project that would break me. In my mind, this movie was so good that Sundance, Cannes, TIFF, Slamdance, SXSW and Tribeca would be begging me to screen my short.

I even had a little fantasy that I’d be double-booked and have to Zoom in for a talkback from my hotel room for one of them since I was so busy.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

There was no Oscar acceptance speech. There is no Marvel five-picture deal. There was a short festival run (the movie got into eight fests and even won Best Comedy at the Revolution Me Festival!) but, now, here we are at the inevitable YouTube stage.

And, after that, comes the posting on Reddit and upvoting your own link stage (yes, I shamelessly did that) before the final “telling people about the movie via my newsletter” stage.

So, here we are.

All of that is to say, I love this 15.5-minute movie about “a guy rejected by a film festival so many times that he takes action” and think you will too. The cast (Michael Margetis, Anna Paone, CW Headley) is fantastic. Aaron came up with some brilliant ideas on-set that really brought the film to life. My friend Joe Lao brilliantly cut this thing perfectly.

Now, all that’s left is for me to grovel and ask you to like the vid, comment on the vid and subscribe to the YouTube channel as people do.

Yes, I do a lot of asking here (remember when I asked you all to read my screenplay last year and promised a favor in return? Sorry about that!) but if you do any of the above, the offer to return the favor stands.

Plus, as a wise co-worker once said to me “if you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

That’s true!

OK, that’s pretty much everything I wanted to say.

(Usually, I would bookend the email with something clever calling back to something I said at the beginning but it’s kinda late and nothing is coming to mind but if you think of a really good callback here, let me know).

Like a rock,

Matt

PS: The movie inspired this Thread (which is based on a true story)

PPS: Here’s the link to the movie again

I’d flirted with the idea for years but never got around to making one. Something about writing my own reviews felt too pretentious. Who did I think I was? Gene Siskel? Richard frickin’ Roeper?

Anyway, the day I signed on, I got hooked and quickly started jotting down my thoughts (the first one ever was for Clint Eastwood’s “Juror #2.” My *** hot take read “Serviceable drama directed by a 94-year-old man. You can really tell Clint employed his classic “one take only” rule on set. Some very stiff performances. Zoey Deutch made a meal out of her scenes, though”) and evangelizing about the site. Where had this wholesome social media site where you can give movies three stars been all my life?

Eventually, for no reason at all, I took it upon myself to watch as many 2025 feature film releases as I possibly could. My thought process was that the more I see, the more I know about what the industry is putting out these days (which will eventually make me a Hollywood big shot, of course).

And, now, more than 200 days after 2025 ended, I have seen 162 movies released last year. I’m still missing a few but what I’ve compiled thus far is a pretty thorough list.

So, what’s going on here? Why am I regurgitating this on Substack?

Well, I thought it would be fun to send my pals bits and pieces from all the * rankings (all the movies I rated five stars, 4.5 stars, etc.) over the next few months, starting with the lowest scores and working my way up to the ten movies I gave five stars (I promise you won’t agree with any of my choices).

Sound good? Cool. Now that all that is out of the way, we’ll start with the only “film” I awarded 1/2 *.

That movie is…

Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On?

Here’s my review (you can also find it on Letterboxd here):

“Is This Thing On?” gets so much so stupefyingly wrong about stand-up that I couldn’t help but judge the film based on the intangibles (yeah, I’m gonna get a little pretentious here).

Acclaimed writer-director and dude from “The Hangover” Bradley Cooper can research comedy all he wants by hanging at the Cellar with his buddies but it’s clear he didn’t do the real heavy lifting and take the stage himself. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been so off-base. Every detail from the crowd reactions to club politics to poor material choices not only falls flat but lands with a deafening thud. This is just NOT the comedian experience in any way, shape or form. Take it from me, a lifelong open mic’er. I may not have any success but I know when to call BS.

More than anything, it seems like Cooper watched Pete Holmes’ HBO series “Crashing” (“Crashers” if you’re a weirdo) and said “I want to do an extended episode of that show but with more intense close ups.” So, he did and came out with a tepid product that resembles a really professionally made web series than a would-be Oscar contender.

FINAL VERDICT: Really there’s not a lot to say here. You could nitpick over Cooper getting the finer points of stand-up wrong (comics aren’t that supportive, you obviously can’t go up at the Cellar if you’re new, crowds aren’t that into half-baked ideas) but that’s barely worth the effort. Same with the movie on the whole.

Although the relationship drama is “mature,” I could barely stand the on-the-nose dialogue. Cooper, this is a first draft.

STRAY NOTES (yes, there are STRAY NOTES within a newsletter entitled STRAY NOTES):

• I just can’t believe people think the far-superior, genuinely moving, occasionally spot-on “Punchline” is worse.

• Nice to see Chloe Radcliffe and Jordan Jensen on the big screen!

• Arnett and Dern aren’t bad but, man, I hated watching their rich people problems play out so much

Nothing else to see here!

Please like and subscribe if you dig this story. All the movies I gave one star in 2025 (there are five of them!) is coming next.

Your pal,

Matt

PS: Check out this one-minute video. I promise it’ll make you laugh.

That’s all for real this time

The playbook needs to be rewritten, the wheel needs a greasing, the business needs to be optimized for the modern moviegoer.

Over the past 60ish years, we’ve seen this happen with a) Easy Rider bypassing the studio system, b) Jaws and Star Wars singlehandedly inventing the blockbuster, c) Sundance democratizing independent cinema, d) movie-based Happy Meal toys hooking kids (I still have a plastic Simba somewhere), e) Titanic/My Big Fat Greek Wedding taking off thanks to word of mouth, f) Marvel franchising the Avengers every which way, g) MoviePass making tickets affordable, h) features being made on iPhones or using the found-footage aesthetic and h) Barbenheimer combining franchises to create a unique double feature bill.

That leaves us at an inflection point in 2026.

Other than regurgitating IP until the end of time — just wanted to let you know, I still love you Minions — where do we go next?

Brad Wyman and Peter Gold, the minds behind the brand new studio WG Pictures, might have an idea.

This producing pair is bringing director Oscar Boyson’s daring satire Our Hero, Balthazar (starring Y2K’s Jaeden Martell and Hugo’s Asa Butterfield) to the big screen in a unique way.

Rather than roll the dark comedy about an optimistic influencer befriending a potentially violent school shooter onto Hulu, the old school and new school twosome decided to do something wholly different.

Eventizing movies.

Essentially, Wyman (an industry vet who produced Monster, Detroit Rock City, Trees Lounge) and Gold (a recent NYU grad who visualized WG’s mission) imagine a future where every screening (even the 11 am matinees!) are hosted by an influencer that fosters conversation and community.

They figured there was no better project to try this with than the hot-button yet crowd-pleasing Our Hero, Balthazar whose grabby trailer made a major impression on YouTube, destroyed audiences at Tribeca and has spawned “crying booths” at subsequent screenings.

I talked to the fellas over Google Meet and got into the nitty gritty of their vision.

Below, you’ll find a condensed version of our chat.

Enjoy and please, please, please check out Our Hero, Balthazar in theaters (they’ll be holding a premiere in NYC on Thursday and Friday with the cast, by the way). You just might be part of the next major sea change in cinema history.

Matt: What was the tipping point that led you guys to create WG?

Peter Gold: For me, I was just blown away that existing distributors were not all over “Our Hero, Balthazar.”

Brad Wyman: The picture’s a masterpiece. It’s exquisite.

PG: Once we got onboard, we felt this was a movie worthy of being eventized so we did everything we could to make that happen.

ML: Are you most interested in box office or creating community with WG?

PG: The dream is to keep finding exciting movies, whether it be acquiring the rights to distribute them, partner with filmmakers, or create our own projects. The next movie we’re going to distribute is “Toad,” which is one of Brad’s longtime passion projects.

We have a very exciting cast (Craig Robinson, Ike Barinholtz, Tiffany Haddish) and it’s hilarious. You can expect to see the movie in theaters at the end of the summer.

BW: People want to be entertained and challenged. I think they want to hope. That’s why “Project Hail Mary” did so well this past weekend. We will continue to try to elevate storytelling, artistry and picture-making.

ML: What exactly does “eventizing films” look like?

PG: We’ve brought in Jet Le Parti who is an incredible Brooklyn-based artist and good friends with Noah Centineo and Enzo Marc. They have a production company called Arkham who partnered with us on the release. Anyway, Jet’s building an art gallery and exhibit featuring artwork inspired by “Our Hero, Balthazar.”

Separately, my friend, Alex Joseph Fox, throws raves. In order to get into this rave of his on the Saturday night of our opening, you have to buy a ticket to “Our Hero, Balthazar.”

BW: It’s the only way you get in!

PG: We’re going to have the cast show up to the rave and be a part of the experience…also, I know it sounds crazy but crying is a big part of our movie.

At an event we had a couple weeks back in NYC, we had people lining up to sit at a “cry booth” and sob. We’ll have a cry booth at the rave, too.

We have Q&As with Halsey, Jaeden Martel and Asa Butterfield, too. The entire cast has really come out to support.

BW: This is not unique, but we wanted to tour our cast. There were 16 premieres across the country for “Gone WIth The Wind” and Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable were at every one of them. When you take over a town, you’re showing everybody, this is where the event is and come join us.

PG: We want to be on 1,000+ screens so it’s going to be difficult if there are four shows a day but I believe every screening can have a host. I’m going to build a network of college students and ambassadors that can sign up to host a screening and build their own communities.

ML: How do you guys choose the projects you produce?

PG: We’re still figuring it out but I think it’s movies that excite us. Whether that means they strike an emotional nerve, have their finger on the pulse, say something on a greater level or give you the most unbelievable, entertaining cinematic experience.

What was so exciting about “Our Hero, Balthazar” is how scared existing distributors were to take on a movie like this. It wasn’t, “oh, we can’t market this.” It wasn’t “oh, this movie’s not good.” It was more that it was too scary for existing distributors to put their label on.

So, we were like, “this is the most exciting thing we could possibly attach ourselves to.” It’s dark and inspires conversation. We had a screening at the Roxy a few weeks back, and, someone who’s very knowledgeable about cinema and culture said “I know this is a good movie because, for me, the movie just started” meaning he’d be thinking about the film long after he walked out of the cinema.

ML: How can filmmakers join your mission and get on your guys’s radar?

PG: It starts with “Our Hero, Bathazar.” So anyone reading this, please buy tickets!

If you do, WG will be able to be that much more effective in continuing to be a distribution company.

BW: We want everybody to hop aboard. I want to see people’s films. I want to read their scripts. If there’s talent, bring it forward.

We’re salt of the earth, too. There’s no Hollywood here. Make good entertainment and we’ll work hard to make sure everybody sees it. We would like to include people within the ownership of the company.

ML: How did you guys get your starts in in film?

PG: I’ve always loved movies. I was doing theater at a young age and then started making my own short films when I was ten and never stopped. I did a program at UCLA Film School when I was 14 for directing and then a USC summer program after that. My childhood was dedicated to the craft of cinema.

Once I graduated, I went to NYU Film School where I directed a movie called “Thena” and continued producing movies.

BW: I realized pretty quickly that I couldn’t write, direct or act but found out there was this job called “producer” that meant “go get the money.” I said “I think I can do that.”

Soon after, I found a book called “Mrs. White” and optioned the rights when I was a 20-year-old student at NYU. I got Donald Cammbell, a classic filmmaker, to adapt it on spec.

Then, I hooked on with the amazing Elliot Kastner, who funded the movie version of “Mrs. White,” which was called “White Of The Eye” and was released in 1987. After that. I just never stopped.

ML: What’s the best theatrical experience you guys have had?

BW: My parents dropped me off at the Mann Chinese (now Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood) in the morning, and I’d watch “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” four times, and then they’d pick me up. That was my babysitter.

More recently, seeing “Top Gun: Maverick” after the pandemic was so exciting. That was something else. But the first time you see “2001,” I mean, Jesus, that’s an incredible theatrical experience. “Clockwork Orange,” too.

PG: The movie that comes to mind is “Waves” at an Angelika in the City. Mid-day screening and it was full.

I wasn’t expecting to have that level of emotional experience. I was just overwhelmed by the power of cinema in that room full of people experiencing something significant together.

ML: In Letterboxd tradition, hit me with your top four.

PG: I love “Apocalypse Now.” Probably “The Graduate.” “Boogie Nights” and I love “Good Time.”

BW: I love Preston Sturges “Sullivan’s Travels.” Maybe “Duck Soup.” “Being There” knocked me out. Then, I gotta have one movie about filmmaking so I’ll go with “Day For Night.” Pretty much anything Truffaut does.

What’s up with me?

Well, my 2024 short “The Michael C. Jordan Theory” (starring Sami Bronowski and Anna Paone) was recently selected for the Funny Under Fifteen Comedy Festival in Hamilton, NY (screening March 27) and Hang Onto Your Shorts Festival in Red Bank, NJ (where it’ll play either May 1 or 2). I finally put the trailer online, too. At the time of publication, the video has a cool 54 views. Hoping for a Michael B. Jordan Oscar bump, though!

And my 2023 short “We Regret To Inform You” (featuring Michael Margetis, Anna Paone and CW Headley) hits Bernardsville, NJ’s Fence Sitter Film Festival on Sunday, April 26.

I’m currently in post on my 2025 flick “Just Jokes” (with Joey Rinaldi, Mary Houlihan, Dan Yang, Georgie Exinord, Matt Maran, Anna Paone and Fluke Human) about a roast battle gone wrong. You’ll be hearing a lot more about that one soon. The trailer is currently being color corrected by my talented DP, Jordan Miller.

In the off chance, you missed my 2022 movie, “Dungeons” (led by Manny Simmons and Mecca McDonald) is now streaming on a little site called YouTube. Not gonna lie, I watched the movie on a whim a few weeks ago and cried a little bit. This one’s a tearjerker.

FYI, I also wrote a Don Rickles biopic and adapted the screenplay into a podcast. Click here if you’d like to listen.

Oh! My sketch “Pearly Gates” recently went up at Sketch Mic. You can see that at the 46-minute mark here.

On social media, I’ve been heavily active on Letterboxd for a little over a year now. I post a film review daily there and use words like “obtuse.” My handle is TubiAppreciator. Please add me. There’s no online community I enjoy more and I follow back almost immediately.

I’m also very active on Threads. I bomb daily. Watch me spiral live!

…and I have a million other things in the works. I’m 31 pages deep into a new feature, I just re-wrote my con man movie (tentatively titled “F—-in’ Rick”) for the 2026 Kinolime competition, drafted a brand new short that takes place in a ball pit, getting 15K steps a day, being a dad and husband. Stuff like that. Trying to stay busy!

Wanna do stuff? Please hit me up. I love making things.

Like a rock,

Levy

*Note: the back half of this newsletter (aka the “what’s up with me” section) is very similar to my last two. Not a lot has changed the past few weeks.

On Tuesday, March 10, I had the pleasure of attending a reading of Bret Raybould, Cristian Duran and Daniel Crow’s uproarious, upcoming feature film Know-It-All at the spacious Kinolime loft along with 80 other audience members in Brooklyn’s Industry City.

Over the course of the nearly two-hour reading, the laughs came fast and furious. As you may recall, a few years ago, I wrote about Raybould and Duran’s scathing satire Race: The Movie: The Play and declared the guys had created something “bold, gutsy, outrageous and self-aware, like all the best comedy should be.”

Four years later, the fellas are back and just as on point as ever.

This time around, Raybould and co. told me not to disclose too much — they’re scheduled to go into production this summer and want to keep things under wraps — but the team did say that I can share that the movie is essentially “Best In Show but for the Jeopardy Tournament of Champions” told through a documentarian’s lens capturing the foibles of a group of brilliant yet flawed (and hilarious) contestants.

Like Race: The Movie: The Play, the ensemble is made up of NYC’s finest comic ringers.

Leading the way is “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” veteran writer and performer Brian Stack who’s playing “Know It All” host (and Alex Trebek stand-in) Chuck Langley. Not only does he milk every line for max comic effect but somehow also has the disaffected gravitas that the late Canadian host employed on “Jeopardy” for 36 years. Perfect casting.

Stack will be joined by:

Bret Raybould, one of NYC’s best stand-up comics and most elastic sketch performers. Here, he’s playing a much less wholesome version of Ken Jennings for max yuks.

Alon Elian, a gifted stand-up/sketch actor/film vet (check out his fearless work in the awe-inspiring yet unsettling short Cringe) who can wring laughs from a facial expression alone. His obsessive, borderline villainous Know-It-All character Weston is bound to be his breakout role. He left the crowd in stitches all night.

Bailey James, who is the beating heart and soul of the film as Madisyn, the contestant who needs to win for all the right reasons. In a movie where everyone is a goof or a ham, she grounds the picture.

Michael Gardiner, an incredibly versatile comedic actor that played a number of roles with relative ease at the reading. Think Phil Hartman with a dash of Phillip Seymour Hoffman. That’s a lot of guys named Phil but you get the idea.

Daniel Yaiullo, the dry as a bone British documentarian holding this film together. Without him, the whole thing falls apart and he handles the tricky role with ease.

David Healy, who you may recognize from Daredevil, Luke Cage or Money Monster, playing an insecure general in the film’s blusteriest, possibly most vulnerable performance.

Mahnaz Damania really works in this movie due to her unwavering commitment to the role as an overly-involved parent. Her character might be unlikeable on the page due to just how pushy she is but Damania really makes you want to root for her because she’s such a fun presence.

Jaydan Sheikh, who co-starred with Bret in the indie comedy Leap Year. He plays the teen tournament champion who has earned a spot in the main tournament and absolutely wrecks opposite Damania. They’re a potent comic duo.

Patrice Battery-Simon keeps things humming along at a nice clip as “Know-It-All’s” seemingly unflappable while quite flustered show producer. Even playing a “straight man” part, she scores quite a few of the film’s biggest laughs.

Robert Aloi sneakily steals the picture as the ultimate know-it-all who has won the game so many times he’s reached the point where he offers unnecessary commentary on his answers. Totally destroyed me. So good.

And, although, he’s not in the cast (as far as I know), props are due to Rob Howard, who lent his deep voice and subversive wit to the stage directions.

As for the film itself, “Know-It-All” is a big, broad, crowd-pleasing comedy that I’d argue is painting on a much larger canvas than Christopher Guest’s kooky dog-centric mockumentary like the creative team claims. Raybould, Crow and Duran also mix in the DNA of the Zucker Brothers’ nonstop gag fests and Mel Brooks’ goofy (and sometimes politically incorrect) parodies with a sprinkle of unexpected heart a la Little Miss Sunshine to create a cinematic experience that’s equally comedically and dramatically-satisfying.

TL;DR: Know-It-All is funny. Very, very funny.

Fans of Jeopardy! will recognize hallmarks of the popular game show in Know-It-All; the filmmakers are clearly fans of the program and even used my wife (and Jeopardy! contestant) Anna Paone’s podcast as research.

Definitely keep an eye out for this movie- you’ll want to see this one in a packed theater.

What’s up with me?

Well, my 2024 short “The Michael C. Jordan Theory” (starring Sami Bronowski and Anna Paone) was recently selected for the Funny Under Fifteen Comedy Festival in Hamilton, NY. The film screens on Friday, March 27. I finally put the trailer online, too. At the time of publication, the video has a cool 37 views. Hoping for a Michael B. Jordan Oscar bump, though.

And my 2023 short “We Regret To Inform You” (featuring Michael Margetis, Anna Paone and CW Headley) hits Bernardsville, NJ’s Fence Sitter Film Festival on Sunday, April 26.

I’m currently in post on my 2025 flick “Just Jokes” (with Joey Rinaldi, Mary Houlihan, Dan Yang, Georgie Exinord, Matt Maran, Anna Paone and Fluke Human) about a roast battle gone wrong. You’ll be hearing a lot more about that one soon. The trailer is currently being color corrected by my talented DP, Jordan Miller.

In the off chance, you missed my 2022 movie, “Dungeons” (led by Manny Simmons and Mecca McDonald) is now streaming on a little site called YouTube. Not gonna lie, I watched the movie on a whim a few weeks ago and cried a little bit. This one’s a tearjerker.

FYI, I also wrote a Don Rickles biopic and adapted the screenplay into a podcast. Click here if you’d like to listen.

Oh! My sketch “Pearly Gates” recently went up at Sketch Mic. You can see that at the 46-minute mark here.

On social media, I’ve been heavily active on Letterboxd for a little over a year now. I post a film review daily there and use words like “obtuse.” My handle is TubiAppreciator. Please add me. There’s no online community I enjoy more and I follow back almost immediately.

I’m also very active on Threads. I bomb daily. Watch me spiral live!

…and I have a million other things in the works. I’m 20 pages deep into a new feature, I just re-wrote my con man movie (tentatively titled “F—-in’ Rick”) for the 2026 Kinolime competition, drafted a brand new short that takes place in a ball pit, getting 15K steps a day, being a dad and husband. Stuff like that. Trying to stay busy!

Wanna do stuff? Please hit me up. I love making things.

Like a rock,

Levy

*Note: the back half of this newsletter (aka the “what’s up with me” section) is very similar to my last one. Not a lot has changed the past few weeks!

Based on my experience, the block usually takes place in the early afternoon or crazy late at night. For some reason, my favorite genre always gets the short end of the stick in favor of dramas, horrors and docs.

I love you dramas, horrors and docs but that’s just wrong.

Thankfully, the New York Comedy Film Festival recognized this major oversight and built out an expansive, week-long experience showcasing only funny movies.

From Feb. 15-22, co-founders Norm Laviolette, Bob Melley, Jess Domain and Steve Eliau programmed features, shorts, documentaries, pilots and panels with big-name familiar faces like Will Forte, Fred Armisen, Leslie Jones, Judy Greer, David Krumholtz at Baruch College and The Asylum Theater (which used to be The PIT).

And I was fortunate enough to have the pleasure of catching the “Punch The Clock” shorts and the TV Episodic Trio Program on Saturday, Feb. 21.

Five films, three pilots. No duds.

All eight were excellent (as is often the case with comedy shorts at festivals). Here’s a bit about each of them.

Punch The Clock Shorts

According to a press release “these shorts turn the 9-to-5 grind into a playground of absurdity, proving that the real chaos isn’t after hours.”

What Does Our Company Actually Do?
Directed by Max Cohn and Ellie Sachs
Starring Richard Kind, Kareem Rahma, Martin Urbano, Julia Shiplett, Zach Schiffman, Ellie Sachs, Scott Cohen

Synopsis: The office attempts to carry out an important meeting, but are continually interrupted by Kyle’s father (Richard Kind).

My thoughts: Richard Kind has been popping up in short films left and right online these past few years, lending a major dose of legitimacy to up-and-comers’ work in the process. I loved him in “Proof of Concept,” “Night Session,” “Black Swell” and “What Cheer?” as well as in this quickie start-up satire produced by Stapelview. Here, he butts in and calls out Millennial/Gen Z BS at an ad agency his son with a broken arm works at (that happens to be populated by comedy ringers like Shiplett, Rahma, Urbano and Schiffman who are all great stand-ups). I love the Boomer justification for being there — ”I don’t want my son to inconvenience you in any way” — which elevated “WDOCAD?” from silly sketch to strong short.

How to watch: The entire 5.5-minute short can be seen here.

Busted!
Directed by Emily Everhard
Starring Sarah Adelman, Emil Wakim, Judy Gold, Savannah DesOrmeaux, Dan Toomey

Synopsis: By day, Sarah is a top scientist at a NYC sperm bank; by night, she’s chasing stand-up comedy—avoiding jokes about her day job. When a heckler pushes her to spill during her biggest set, the resulting viral video lands her in HR and costs her everything. Fired and exposed, Sarah learns that sometimes risking it all is the only way to find your voice. Based on a true story.

My thoughts: In the Q&A afterwards, star Sarah Adelman said this short marked her acting debut and I simply can’t believe that. Her go-for-broke, raunchy performance was easily one of the strongest I saw all evening. This is how stars are made. On a pure storytelling level, “Busted!” is a 13-minute epic that I’d classify as narratively tight, joke heavy and emotionally weighty as we watch a young person’s greatest fear come to life: losing a job because of something you posted on the internet. Brash and bold, “Busted!” is the definition of a crowd pleaser.

How to watch: A raucous one-minute trailer is available on YouTube.

The Callback
Directed by Kara Herold
Starring Molly Densmore, Alice Schaerer, Thom Miller, Ricky Pak, Aizzah Fatima, Matthew Winning

Synopsis: A comedy about following a dream into a waking nightmare.

My thoughts: “The Callback” may have sneakily been the most subversive short of the bunch. The film tells the tale of a young actress looking for more subtext from the thinly-written roles she finds herself auditioning for on a daily basis. Loopy and charming, this smart industry send-up captures the pure giddiness one experiences when entering the creative arts before being bogged down by reality, logistics and plain, ol’ laziness. Also, it didn’t hurt that “The Callback” featured some of the most expressive animation and graphics I’ve seen all year. Even the tongue-in-cheeks credits were a triumph. Viva la art!
How to watch: A clip tied to the La Femme Film Festival Instagram account can be found here.

Asian Male, 60s Lead
Directed by Charlotte Nicdao
Starring Alfred Nicdao, Molly Daniels, Don Bridges

Synopsis: 63-year-old Filipino-Australian actor Alex Montes is given 48 hours to prepare for the biggest opportunity of his life. But his scattered enthusiasm takes over and the rest of his life falls apart.

My thoughts: Interestingly enough, Asian Male, 60s Lead” was a mirror image of “The Callback.” However, instead of a disillusioned, young woman at the center, the Melbourne-based “AM60sL” (which happens to be directed by “Mythic Quest” star Charlotte Nicdao and starring her father Alfred) features a man in his 60s clinging to an acting dream while working at a bustling coffee shop. I’d argue this short was the most subdued and philosophical of the block; more a sad but sweet character study than bust-your-gut laugh riot. That’s not to say there weren’t major pops though; every time the lead actor came into his own while practicing his audition monologue, the audience doubled over and the story soared. Also, major props to the colorist. My God, Nicdao’s coffee shop was teeming with life as the rich browns and oranges practically jumped off the screen. One final kudo to the director for not showing her father’s actual audition and leaving us wondering how he performed. Quiet, subtle choice. Actually, another thing! The end credits gimmick in this film was as innovative as “The Callback’s.” Good night for great credits.

How to watch: Not available: You can find the short’s Film Freeway account here.

Greetings
Directed by Stephanie Bencin
Starring Tabitha Vidaurri, Tiffany Elle, Julia Kelly, Ally Condrath, Caitlin Bitzegaio, Michael Hartney

Synopsis: Greetings follows Trish, a shy office worker who discovers that whatever she writes in coworkers’ birthday cards comes true. When her own birthday is forgotten, she uses this power to get revenge on her toxic workplace—only to be overtaken by her long-held resentments.

My thoughts: The evening’s off-kilter closer was easily the most surreal of the bunch. Director Bencin took a personal anecdote (having her birthday forgotten) and turned a fun tale into a full-on, candy-colored, comic vision. Gloriously odd yet endlessly punchy, “Greetings” is made up of a cast of future stars that ought to be popping up in sitcoms in the near future and if the industry is just in any way, Bencin will be writing and directing them. She’s a talent to look out for. SIDE NOTE: This movie might have the greatest poop joke I’ve ever seen. You’ll know it when you see it.

How to watch: Not available; short clips can be streamed here though.

My biggest takeaway after watching?

All these movies were about how bailing on “punching the clock” and following your dreams is the way to live. Amen.

Once the credits rolled, three of the five directors shared the stage for a Q&A. They chatted about creative setbacks, happy accidents while in production and their inspiration. Most notably though, the Busted team shared that there’s a hospital in New Jersey with an abandoned wing that will let you film there for cheap. Now that’s a hot tip.

One 20-minute intermission later (that came with free vodka and edibles. Yes, really), we were all back in our seats for an impromptu awards ceremony because the oncoming blizzard pushed the schedule up a day. Rather than hand out trophies, the co-founders got creative and doled out drawings by third graders to the winners. Nice touch.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t familiar with any of the victors except the very funny Dan Perlman who was recognized for his light-as-air yet airtight confection Being Buble. If you haven’t had a chance to see the bizarrely fascinating 20-minute pic, treat yourself.

TV Episodic Trio Program

I wasn’t planning on staying for a second round but I ran into my ol’ pal Ben Wasserman (who starred in a goofy sketch of mine way back in 2015) who said he was in one of the pilots. Well, damn, I can’t pass that up.

So, at 10 pm, I parked myself into the Asylum’s stadium-style seating for a second screening. Here are my thoughts about the trio of shorts I witnessed to close the night.

Livvie Grace’s Bad Bitch Bucket List

Synopsis: A woman stuck in the monotony of adulthood finds her teenage bucket list and, guided by a manifestation of her rebellious younger self, embarks on a wild journey to complete it—risking everything she knows along the way.

My Thoughts: Right off the bat, this pilot established the world (affluent but dead-end suburbia), characters (snarky Millennials, an overbearing mom) and tone (let’s say PEN15 earnestness and awkwardness meets 30 Rock joke density). I was hooked. However, “LGBBBL” really takes flight when the story engine presents itself: our lost 30-something protagonist discovers a bucket list she wrote as a 16-year-old and uses that as a guide for how to live her life, along with the help of her actual teenage self who just so happens to be played by the show’s creator, writer and director. Sweet and sentimental, I could totally see this series catching on either on The CW, Hulu or Amazon Prime.

How To Watch: Sadly unavailable as of now.

How We Grieve
Directed by and starring Justin and Meghan Ross
Featuring Ben Wasserman

Synopsis: A docuseries hosted by two filmmaker siblings exploring all the ways people cope with grief and death across cultures and communities, hoping it helps them finally process their own grief and confront their immense fear of death. Even if it makes them super uncomfortable.

My Thoughts: Easily the heaviest watch of the night, “How We Grieve” is an amazing piece of edutainment marrying heartbreaking trauma with gallows humor to create a very bingeable piece of TV that also really works on the big screen. At the center of the production are the Ross siblings who share their story of loss (and gelati) before handing the reins over to the aforementioned Wasserman. Ben is one of the most essential and fearless live performers I’ve ever bore witness to; he breathes humanity into everything he touches and this pilot is no different. Interviews and clips of his live show are mesmerizing; he clearly processes the macabre in a way that’s all his own. “How We Grieve” is allegedly coming to PBS; I can’t wait for unsuspecting viewers to have their socks knocked off with this powerhouse.

How To Watch: I couldn’t track anything down but I did find this Instagram post.

Gumshoes
Starring Dana Quercioli, Megan Hovde, Stephanie Weir

Synopsis: Sam and Paige are best friends who are obsessed with procedurals but bored with their lives, until they decide to stop watching crimes on tv, and start solving them in real life.

My Thoughts: Pound for pound, the most assured piece of comedy I saw all evening. Qercioli and Hovde have undeniable chemistry as the best pal leads but they also pepper in the world with gifted actors who can match their talents (my jaw dropped when Stephanie Weir appeared onscreen and proceeded to milk every line for all its worth). However, the rat-a-tat, rapid banter and sight gags (look out for a blink and you’ll miss it JK Rowling joke that you’ll never forget) is what really makes this pilot so aces. Netflix, HBO (or Netflix/HBO come next year), Hulu/Disney+, Mubi, grab this one ASAP. The untapped, woke elder Millennial/Gen X demographic will thank you.

How To Watch: The pilot’s Instagram will give you a taste of the creator’s goofy flavor.

And that was my New York Comedy Film Festival experience!

What’s new with me?

Well, my 2024 short “The Michael C. Jordan Theory” (starring Sami Bronowski and Anna Paone) was just selected for the Funny Under Fifteen Comedy Festival in Hamilton, NY. I finally put the trailer online, too. At the time of publication, the video has a cool ten views.

And my 2023 short “We Regret To Inform You” (featuring Michael Margetis, Anna Paone and CW Headley) will screen at Bernardsville, NJ’s Fence Sitter Film Festival on Sunday, April 26.

I’m currently in post on my 2025 flick “Just Jokes” (with Joey Rinaldi, Mary Houlihan, Dan Yang, Georgie Exinord, Matt Maran, Anna Paone and Fluke Human) about a roast battle gone wrong. You’ll be hearing a lot more about that one soon.

In the off chance, you missed my 2022 movie, “Dungeons” (led by Manny Simmons and Mecca McDonald) is now streaming on a little site called YouTube.

Oh! My sketch “Pearly Gates” recently went up at Sketch Mic. You can see that at the 46-minute mark here.

On social media, I’ve been heavily active on Letterboxd for a little over a year now. I post a film review daily there and use words like “obtuse.” My handle is TubiAppreciator. Please add me. There’s no online community I enjoy more and I follow back almost immediately.

I’m also very active on Threads. I bomb daily. Watch me spiral live!

…and I have a million other things in the works. I’m procrastinating on writing a feature, re-writing last year’s con man movie for a competition, producing my 2026 short, putting sketches on the web, getting 15K steps a day, being a dad and husband. Stuff like that. Trying to stay busy!

Wanna do stuff? Please hit me up. I love making things.

Like a rock,

Levy

Unprompted, one of the actors casually said “they don’t make comedy movies anymore.”

Whoa.

Over the course of my 37 lil years on this planet, I’d never been so teed up to say “well, actually…”

Let me explain.

As you may recall, for the past few years — 2022, 2023 and 2024 to be exact — I’ve been documenting all the comedy feature films that were released theatrically and digitally.

No one asked me to do this OCD-level task.

However, other than Wikipedia (whose reports are quite incomplete!), I couldn’t find a website that included all of this incredibly important data prior to, you know, me doing this thing.

So, in early 2023, I said to myself “you’re the man for the job” and made sure to track down every comedy film I could find online (that had a trailer and official release date) on site after site after site because, otherwise, no one else would and this incredibly important data would be lost to the sands of time.

And, after 48 months of looking all over the internet to make sure I have as complete a list as possible for each year, I’m still obsessed with this trivial yet time-consuming undertaking. My one-off post in 2022 to prove “they still make comedy movies!” has since become a full-on, year-round hobby that I probably think about once or twice a day.

That’s the completist’s burden, baby. No comedy or comedy-adjacent movie gets left behind!

Anyhow, after digging and diving and searching and scrounging, I think I have a mostly complete list for this year with 351 (!) movies that in some way, shape or form qualify as comedies by my metrics (excluding the 20 movies I labeled “almost comedies”). That’s 48 more than in 2024! Not bad considering we may be in the last gasp of the industry before AI swallows the arts whole.

OK, now for the fun stuff.

Since I spend so much time in the trenches, I often notice little industry and cultural trends that often go unreported on. Here are a just few observations I made this year:

• “The Naked Gun,” “Happy Gilmore 2” and “Friendship” got people talking about comedy movies again in a big way (at least in the corners of the internet I reside in). That’s a good thing!

• Once again, a sizable percentage of the ten Best Picture nominees (“One Battle After Another,” “Bugonia,” “Sentimental Value” and “Marty Supreme”) are somewhat comedic. Kinda cool that the Academy has a little bit of a sense of humor as do prestige filmmakers. I like that.

• Documentaries paying tribute to comedians (Eddie Murphy, John Candy, Jim Downey, Marc Maron, Andy Kaufman, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara) were all over the place this year. Easy cash grab that streamers will pick up? Methinks yes!

• No one had a bigger year than Pedro Pascal. Most actors/actresses appear on this list twice- Pascal has five films (“Eddington,” “Freaky Tales,” “Materialists,” “Fantastic Four” and “The Uninvited”). The man is taking full advantage of his cultural moment and working in big-budget blockbusters, with auteurs and dropping into tiny indies. Kudos. This is how you A-List.

• Actors who could open movies 5-15 years ago like Kevin Bacon and Bryan Cranston haven’t gone away- they’re just in smaller projects that somehow everyone missed. This is a bummer to be sure but at least they’re still working is what I tell myself.

• Speaking of streaming, the biggies like Netflix, Apple and Amazon seem to commit to one or two big action comedies with household-name stars that would have gotten theatrical releases a few years back. Amazon led the pack with three in 2025 (“Play Dirty,” “Heads of State” “The Pickup”) and just dropped “The Wrecking Crew” in January ‘26.

• Auteurs like Luc Besson, David Mamet, Quentin Dupieux and Joseph Khan are still kicking around. Their movies are of varying quality but they’re out there. You just gotta look.

• The “Two Sleepy People” team, Jonah Feingold, Joe Kwaczala, Sean Oliver, Kareem Rahma and Jamie Linn-Watson are just a few of my favorite writer/directors making scrappy, super low-budget features with big laughs. Aspiring filmmakers, take note. They’ve built the model for the future.

• Genre mashups like horror-comedy, thriller-comedy and rom-coms (unconventional and formulaic) were once again all over the place. Based on my un-scientific findings, horror-comedies and unconventional rom-coms were the unofficial “Matt Levy subgenres” that led the pack this year with 20 movie releases apiece.

• My favorite films this past year were all twisty thrillers helmed by Millennial writer/directors who built fantastic tension-releasing jokes into their clever stories. “Companion,” “Twinless” and “Lurker” are all perfect examples of this burgeoning sub-subgenre that I hope continues to flourish.

• Somehow, people still make “we gotta save our struggling business” movies. God bless ‘em but that subgenre has been tired for decades.

Alright, before getting to the unruly list, I wanted to do a little housekeeping and let you know the 45 subgenres I’ve included are a bit arbitrary. Some movies like, say, a “Bugonia” could reasonably fit into three or four of these groups but I chose whatever felt most appropriate.

Nobody’s ever gotten mad at me about the subgenres but I thought I’d let you know because if I didn’t, I’d feel as if I hadn’t done my due diligence and if you know anything about me, I’m all about diligence getting due.

Also, like last year, I included a trailer for all the movies (that’s what each link will take you to) as well as the three most notable actors. In some cases, I put the most famous person even if they had a small part just because I found them more interesting. My apologies to the smaller actors who don’t appear here in favor of a Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Julia Sweeney, Beck Bennett or Vanessa Bayer (gotta rep SNL!).

Unlike last year, I didn’t include the country of origin for the foreign comedies but the name of the director. Please check them out! There are some goodies in there.

Finally, sadly, no, I haven’t seen all the movies on this list…yet. Fingers crossed I do someday, soon. Yes, even you, “A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas.”

One last thing!

Before we officially dive in, I’d like to go back to that “Just Jokes” Zoom conversation from July.

After everyone had agreed that, yes, there weren’t many comedies being made, I chimed in and said “that Will Ferrell movie (“You’re Cordially Invited” fyi) from January was really underrated.”

Yes, that’s really I could think of to say in that moment. Maybe I’ll send them this list to prove my point instead.

Anyway, here’s my ridiculously long list of all the comedy movies released in 2025. Please let me know what I missed so I can include said flick in the “missed in ‘25’ portion of the 2026 edition.

With that, please enjoy the fruits of my labor. I hope you have half as much fun reading this list as I did compiling all the movies.

Masterpieces

Naked Gun (Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser)

Splitsville (Dakota Johnson, Adria Arjona, Michael Angelo Covino)

Ick (Mena Suvari, Brandon Routh, Malina Pauli Weissman)

Critically-acclaimed awards contenders with jokes

One Battle After Another (Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor)

Bugonia (Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Stavros Halkias)

Marty Supreme (Timothee Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tyler The Creator)

Sentimental Value (Stellan Skarsgard, Renate Reinsve, Elle Fanning)

The Phoenician Scheme (Benicio Del Toro, Michael Cera, Mia Threapleton)

Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, Naomi Ackie, John Carroll Lynch)

The Life of Chuck (Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mark Hammil)

Nouvelle Vague (Zoey Deutch, Guillaume Marbeck, Aubry Dullin)

Twisty, Millennial instant classics

Companion (Jack Quaid, Sophie Thatcher, Harvey Guillen)

Twinless (Dylan O’Brien, James Sweeney, Lauren Graham)

Lurker (Théodore Pellerin, Archie Madekwe, Zack Fox)

Novocaine (Jack Quaid, Matt Walsh, Ray Nicholson)

Oh, Hi! (Logan Lerman, Molly Gordon, David Cross)

Heady, modern social satire

Eddington (Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone)

Friendship (Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd, Kate Mara)

Mountainhead (Steve Carell, Cory Michael Smith, Ramy Youssef)

Good Fortune (Aziz Ansari, Seth Rogen, Keanu Reeves)

Atropia (Alia Shawkat, Callum Turner, Channing Tatum)

Whodunit with some ha-ha’s

Wake Up Dead Man (Daniel Craig, Josh Brolin, Glenn Close)

Honey Don’t (Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, Charlie Day)

Understated, droll, relationship-driven, character studies with impressive casts

Is This Thing On? (Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Bradley Cooper)

Sacramento (Michael Cera, Kristen Stewart, Michael Angarano)

Father Mother Sister Brother (Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Cate Blanchett)

The Baltimorons (Michael Strassner, Liz Larsen, Chris Strassner)

Peter Hujar’s Day (Ben Whishaw, Rebecca Hall)

A Little Prayer (Jane Levy, David Strathairn, Celia Weston)

We’re All Gonna Die (Ashly Burch, Jordan Rodrigues, Chase Mangum)

Scrappy indies

Eephus (Bill Lee, Wayne Diamond, Frederick Wiseman)

Or Something (Kareem Rahma, Mary Neely, Brandon Wardell)

Two Sleepy People (Baron Ryan, Caroline Grossman, Sarah J. Bartholomew)

Paying For It (Dan Beirne, Emily Lê, Andrea Werhun)

Bang Bang (Tim Blake Nelson, Kevin Corrigan, Glenn Plummer)

American Comic (Joe Kwaczala, Sam Wiles, John Eisenrich)

SKIT (Jamie Linn Watson, Nataly Aukar, Jim O’Heir)

A Comedy of Errors (Noel Leon, Brian O’Halloran, Luke Null)

Tallywacker (Jeremy Dubs, Chris Goodwin, Adwoa Duncan Williams)

Kiss and Be Friends (Marine Arradon, Anu Loureiro, Gustavo Rebelo, Lucas Melo)

A Cell Phone Movie (Will Sterling, Tessa Glanville, Alan Peterson)

Sunlight (Nina Conti, Shenoah Allen, Bill Wise)

Guacamole Yesterdays (Randy Havens, Charity Cervantes, Adetinpo Thomas)

Guitar Lessons (Roseanne Supernault, Kaden Noskiye, Conway Kootenay)

Dreaming Of You (Jack McCafferty, Lauren LaVera, Ian Ross)

Fwends (Emmanuelle Mattana, Melissa Gan)

Innovative animation

K-Pop Demon Hunters (Arden Cho, Joel Kim Booster, Ken Jeong)

Looney Tunes: The Day The Earth Blew Up (Wayne Knight, Laraine Newman, Peter MacNicol)

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (featuring the voices of Ben Whitehead, Lauren Patel, Diane Morgan)

Boys Go To Jupiter (Cole Escola, Janeane Garofalo, Elsie Fisher)

Arco (Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg, Mark Ruffalo)

Endless Cookie (dir. Seth and Peter Scriver)

Fixed (Adam DeVine, Idris Elba, Bobby Moynihan)

Meta, self-referential movies

Jay Kelly (George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern)

Magic Farm (Chloe Sevigny, Simon Rex, Alex Wolff)

Not An Artist (Haley Joel Osment, RZA, Paul Lieberstein)

The Premiere (Sam Pezzullo, Jacqueline Murphy, Wendy Federman)

Stealing Pulp Fiction (Karan Soni, Jon Rudnitsky, Jason Alexander)

Surreal cult classics in the making

Freaky Tales (Pedro Pascal, Jay Ellis, Ben Menelsohn)

Reflection In A Dead Diamond (dir. Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani)

Ebony & Ivory (Sky Elobar, Gil Gex, Carl Solomon)

Sketch (Tony Hale, D’arcy Carden, Bianca Belle)

Vulcanizadora (Joshua Burge, Joel Potrykus, Solo Potrykus)

Fucktoys (Annapurna Sriram, Sadie Scott, Big Freedia)

Stationed At Home (Jamie Donnelly, Erik Bjarnar, Eliza VanCort)

Thrillers with a dark comic streak

If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You (Rose Byrne, Conan O’ Brien, A$AP Rocky)

The Roofman (Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Juno Temple)

Opus (John Malkovich, Ayo Edebri, Juliette Lewis)

The Luckiest Man In America (Paul Walter Hauser, Walton Goggins, Patti Harrison)

Holland (Nicole Kidman, Matthew McFadyen, Gael García Bernal)

Adulthood (Josh Gad, Kayla Scodelario, Alex Winter)

Americana (Sydney Sweeney, Paul Walter Hauser, Halsey)

Sew Torn (Eve Connolly, Clum Worhy, John Lynch)

Psycho Therapy (Britt Lower, John Magaro, Steve Buscemi)

Misercordia (Félix Kysyl, Catherine Frot, Jacques Develay)

Electra (Maria Bakalova, Abigail Cowen, Jack Farthing)

Something Is About To Happen (Malena Alterio, Aitana Sánches-Gijón)

Stone Cold Fox (Kiernan Shipka, Krysten Ritter, Kiefer Sutherland)

Hostages (Charlotte Ritchie, Tanya Moodie, Nicholas Asbury)

Et Tu (Malcolm McDowell, Lou Diamond Phillips, Rachel Alig)

Coyotes (Justin Long, Kate Bosworth, Katherine McNamara)

Birthright (Travis Jeffery, Maria Angelico, Michael Hurst)

Don’t Trip (Matthew Sato, Olivia Rouyre, Fred Melamed)

Quirky foreign films

No Other Choice (dir. Park Chan-Wook)

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (dir. Rungano Nyoni)

The Piano Accident (dir. Quentin Dupieux)

The Love That Remains (dir. Hlynur Pálmason)

A Useful Ghost (dir. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke)

Little Amelie or the Character of Rain (dir. Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han)

Broken Rage (dir. Takeshi Kitano)

Escape From The 21st Century (dir. Li Yang)

Lesbian Space Princesses (dir. Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese)

Dog On Trial (dir. Laetitia Dosch)

Holy Cow (dir. Louise Courvoisier)

People and Meat (dir. Yang Jong-Hyun)

Peak Everything (dir. Anne Émond)

Sister Midnight (dir. Karan Kandhari)

DJ Ahmet (dir. Georgi M. Unkovski)

Koln 75 (dir. Ido Fluk)

Pet Detective (dir. Praneesh Vijayan)

Thamma (dir. Aditya Sarpotdar)

Dominic and the Ladies Purse (dir. Gautham Vasudev Menon)

Pretty Crazy (dir. Lee Sang-geun)

She Said Maybe (dir. Buket Alakuş and Ngo The Chau)

Peacock (dir. Bernhard Wenger)

Ramona (dir. Andrea Bagney)

Almost Family (dir. Felipe Joffily)

Unconventional rom coms

Eternity (Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, Callum Turner)

Materialists (Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, Chris Evans)

The Threesome (Zoey Deutch, Jaboukie Young-White, Julia Sweeney)

Paul and Paulette Take A Bath (Marie Benati, Jérémie Galiana, Fanny Cottençon)

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (Camille Rutherford, Pablo Pauly, Charlie Anson)

Picture This (Simone Ashley, Phil Dunster, Hero Fiennes Tiffin)

31 Candles (Jonah Feingold, Joey Dardano, Judy Gold)

I’ve Never Wanted Anyone More (Douglas Booth, Iris Apatow, Alison Pill)

I Love You Forever (Cazzie David, Ray Nicholson, Jon Rudnitsky)

Adult Best Friends (Delaney Buffet, Katie Corwin, Zachary Quinto)

The Breakup Season (Chandler Riggs, Jacob Wysocki, James Urbaniak)

June and John (Matilda Price, Luke Stanton Eddy, Ryan Shoos)

Darkest Miriam (Britt Lower, Tom Mercier, Sook-Yin Lee)

I Really Love My Husband (Madison Lanesey, Lisa Jacqueline Starrett, Travis Quentin Young)

Asking for a Friend (Marcus Middleton, Michelle Atkins, Derrick Holley)

Messy (Ione Skye, Adam Goldberg, Thomas Middleditch)

Jess Plus None (Abby Miller, Marielle Scott, Matt Walsh)

One Night In Tokyo (Tokiko Kitagawa, Reza Emamiyehl, Cailee Oliver)

Meet Cute In Manhattan (Kendall Leary, Terence Chen, Carolyn Kang)

The Love Scam (Laura Adriani, Antonio Folletto, Vincenzo Nemolato)

Wedding hijinks

You’re Cordially Invited (Will Ferrell, Reese Witherspoon, Geraldine Viswanathan)

Wedding Banquet (Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran)

Bride Hard (Rebel Wilson, Anna Chlumsky, Da’Vine Joy Randolph)

Dinner party madness

Bad Shabbos (David Paymer, Method Man, Kyra Sedgwick)

The Trouble with Jessica (Alan Tudyk, Richard Sewell, Olivia Williams)

The Uninvited (Pedro Pascal, Walton Goggins, Rufus Sewell)

The Dinner Party (Griffin Newman, John Hodgman, Zach Cherry)
The Stress Is Killing Me (Grayson Berry, Carly Christopher, April Hartman)

Note: Both “Bad Shabbos” and “The Trouble with Jessica” are part of the “someone dies at a dinner and the party tries to hide the deceased” sub-subgenre.

Crazy day in the life

One Of Them Days (Keke Palmer, SZA, Janelle James)

Caught Stealing (Austin Butler, Matt Smith, Zoe Kravitz)

Bull Run (Tom Blyth, Chris Diamantopoulos, Jay Mohr)

Sour Party (Corey Feldman, Reggie Watts, Chris Marquette)

Bunny (Mo Stark, Ben Jacobson, Liza Colby)

Rats! (Danielle Evon Ploeger, Jacob Wysocki, John Ennis)

When I’m Ready (June Schreiner, Dermot Mulroney, Andrew Ortenberg)

Unique docs with a sense of humor

Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music (Questlove’s operatic ode to all things music on SNL)

Secret Mall Apartment (A group of friends live in a mall)

Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted (an atmospheric nod to Swamp Dogg)

Finding Groovopolis (a documentarian finds a screenplay his late dad wrote)

Future Council (Upbeat doc that finds fun angles to look at climate change)

Hagiographic docs celebrating the greats

Being Eddie (about the life and times of Eddie Murphy)

Pee-Wee As Himself (the first warts-and-all look at Paul Reubens’ life)

I Like Me (Colin Hanks remembers John Candy)

I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not (CNN’s look back at one of comedy’s most divisive figures)

Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie (The last ride for Cheech and Chong)

Are We Good (Marc Maron’s life told in pictures)

You Had To Be There (about the 1972 Toronto production of Godspell)

Stiller and Meara (Ben Stiller’s take on his parents’ showbiz career)

Downey Wrote That (a look back at Jim Downey’s career)

Thank You Very Much (another Andy Kaufman doc with some new tidbits)

Portrait of a Comedian (Joe List showcases his friend Tom Dustin)

Range Life: A Pavement Story (Alex Ross Perry’s biopic/doc skewering retrospectives)

Feel-good tearjerkers that are categorized as comedies

Song Sung Blue (Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson, Michael Imperioli)

Rental Family (Brendan Fraser, Mari Yamamo, Shannon Gorman)

Ella McCay (Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Julie Kavner)

My Dead Friend Zoe (Natalie Morales, Morgan Freeman, Sonequa Martin-Green)

Bob Trevino Likes It (Barbie Ferreira, John Leguizamo, French Stewart)

Mr Blake, At Your Service (John Malkovich, Fanny Ardant, Émilie Dequenne)

The Life List (Sofia Carson, Kyle Allen, Connie Britton)

The Travellers (Luke Bracey, Bryan Brown, Susie Porter)

Once Upon My Mother (Leíla Bekhti, Esther Perez, Jonathan Cohen)

Superboys of Malegoan (Adarsh, Gourav,Vineet Kumar, Shashank Arora)

All Saints Day (Don Swayze, Lenny Clarke, Jeff Berg)

The Compatriots (Rafael Silva, Denis Shepherd, Caroline Portu)

There’s Still Tomorrow (Manuela Fanelli, Paola Cortellesi, Valerio Mastandrea)

Under the radar comedies starring big names from yesteryear that didn’t make much noise or went straight to streaming

The Pickup (Eddie Murphy, Pete Davidson, Keke Palmer)

Code 3 (Rainn Wilson, Lil Rel, Rob Riggle)

Nonnas (Vince Vaughn, Linda Cardellini, Susan Sarandon)

The Best You Can (Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Ray Romano)

Everything’s Going To Be Great (Bryan Cranston, Allison Janney, Chris Cooper)

Playdate (Kevin James, Isla Fisher, Stephen Root)

Chosen Family (Heather Graham, Julia Stiles, Andrea Savage)

Tapawingo (Billy Zane, Jon Heder, Gina Gershon)

Ex-Husbands (Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Richard Benjamin)

All That We Love (Margaret Cho, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Atsuko Okatsuka)

Lost and Found In Cleveland (Jon Lovitz, Martin Sheen, June Squibb)

Life of crime laughers

Riff Raff (Pete Davidson, Bill Murray, Ed Harris)

California King (Travis Bennett, Jimmy Tatro, Joel McHale)

Chicken Town (Ghraham Fellows, Laurence Rickard, Alistair Green)

Spit (David Wenham, Pallavi Sharda, David Field)

Kidnapping Inc. (Jasmuel Andri, Rolaphton Mercure, Anabel Lopez)

Horror that’s secretly a little silly

Weapons (Austin Abrams, Amy Madigan, Josh Brolin)

The Monkey (Theo James, Elijah Wood, Tatiana Maslany)

The Parenting (Edie Falco, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow)

M3gan 2.0 (Allison Williams, Jemaine Clement, Aristotle Athari)

Hell of a Summer (Finn Wolfhard, Fred Hechinger, Billy Bryk)

Heart Eyes (Jordana Brewster, Devon Sawa, Michaela Watkins)

Together (Dave Franco, Alison Brie, Damon Herriman)

Toxic Avenger (Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay, Kevin Bacon)

Bone Lake (Maddie Hasson, Andra Nechita, Alex Roe)

Dust Bunny (Mads Mikkelsen, Sigourney Weaver, David Dastmalchian)

100 Nights of Hero (Nicholas Galitzine, Maika Monroe, Charli XCX)

Drop (Meghann Fahy, Brandon Sklenar, Reed Diamond)

F Marry Kill (Lucy Hale, Virginia Gardner, Brooke Nevin)

Borderline (Samara Weaving, Ray Nicholson, Alba Baptista)

Clown In A Cornfield (Katie Dogulas, Aaron Abrams, Will Sasso)

Mermaid (Johnny Pemberton, Kevin Nealon, Kirk Fox)

Forever Home (Drew Leatham, Sammie Lideen, Michael DeCamp)

The Fuzzies (Seph Casani, Gordy Cassel, Jay Darden)

Queens of the Dead (Katy O’Brian, Jack Haven, Riki Lindhome)

Found Footage (Dean Cameron, Brenan Keel Cook, Rachel Alig)

Comedy of manners

After The Hunt (Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg)

Death of a Unicorn (Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Will Poulter)

The Roses (Olivia Colman. Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Samberg)

Nuked (Justin Bartha, Anna Camp, Lucy Punch)

Cheeky Britcom

The Ballad of Wallis Island (Carey Mulligan, Tim Key, Tom Basden)

Fackham Hall (Jimmy Carr, Tom Felton, Damian Lewis)

The Thursday Murder Club (Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley)

My Mother’s Wedding (Scarlett Johansson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Freida Pinto)

One More Shot (Emily Browning, Fiona Harris, Olivia Piplios)

The Hook (Elijah Rowen, Jack McEvoy, Mei Bignall)

Portrait of Dangerous Women (Tara Fitzgerald, Jeany Spark, Yasmin Monet Prince)

Good, ol’ fashioned action comedy

The Running Man (Glen Powell, Emilia Jones, Michael Cera)

Play Dirty (Mark Wahlberg, LaKeith Stanfield, Tony Shalhoub)

Fountain of Youth (John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Stanley Tucci)

Heads of State (Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Idris Elba, John Cena)

Love Hurts (Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, Sean Astin)

Back In Action (Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, Glenn Close)

Eenie Meanie (Samara Weaving, Jermaine Fowler, Steve Zahn)

Bad Man (Seann William Scott, Johnny Simmons, Ethan Suplee)

Guns Up (Kevin James, Christina Ricci, Melissa Leo)

Fight or Flight (Josh Hartnett, Katee Sackhoff, Charithra Chandran)

Boss (Jo Woo-jin, Jung Kyung-ho, Park Ji-Hwan)

Zero (Gary Dourdan, Moran Rosenblatt, Annabelle Lengronne)

London Calling (Josh Duhamel, Rick Hoffman, Jeremy Ray Taylor)

Almost Cops (Jandino Asporaat, Werner Kolf, Florence Vos Weeda)

Sci-fi ridiculousness

Mickey 17 (Robert Pattinson, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette)

Turn Me On (Nick Robinson, Bel Powley, Justin H. Min)

Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox (Joel McHale, Keith David, Danny Trejo)

Clone Cops (Phillip Cordell, Quinnlan Ashe, Steve Byrne)

The Empire (Anamaria Vartolomei, Camille Cottin, Fabrice Luchini)

Superhero blockbusters with jokes

Fantastic Four: First Steps (Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach)

Thunderbolts (Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Julia Louis-Dreyfus)

Superman (David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, Beck Bennett)

Henry Danger: The Movie (Cooper Barnes, Ella Anderson, Frankie Grande)

Goofy animated kid’s movies

Zootopia 2 (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Shakira, Macaulay Culkin)

Elio (Zoe Saldaña, Brad Garrett, Jameela Jamil)

Dog Man (Pete Davidson, Cheri Oteri, Melissa Villaseñor)

The Spongebob Movie: The Search for Squarepants (Tom Kenny, Mark Hamill, Ice Spice)

Smurfs (Rihanna, James Corden, John Goodman)

Bad Guys 2 (Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Awkwafina)

In Your Dreams (Craig Robinson, Simu Liu, Cristin Milioti)

Sneaks (Martin Lawrence, Laurence Fishburne, Anthony Mackie)

A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas (Nathan Kress, Grey DeLisle, Nolan North)

Falcon Express (Wyatt Bowen, Tristan D. Lalla, Marck Camacho)

Stitch Head (Asa Butterfield, Joel Fry, Rob Brydon)

Goofy live-action kid’s movies

A Minecraft Movie (Jack Black, Jason Momoa, Jennifer Coolidge)

Lilo and Stitch (Chris Sanders, Zach Galifianakis, Tia Carrere)

Gabby’s Dollhouse (Laila Lockhart Kraner, Kristen Wiig, Jason Mantzoukas)

F+ (Wells Rappaport, Jennifer Esposito, Tommy Davidson)

Coming of Age

I Swear (Robert Aramayo, Maxine Peake, Peter Mullan)

Summer of 69 (Chloe Fineman, Paula Pell, Charlie Day)

Pools (Odessa A’zion, Mason Gooding, Michael Vlamis)

Jazzy (Jasmine Bearkiller Shangreaux, Syriah Fool Head Means)

Everything To Me (Judy Greer, Victoria Pedretti, Rich Sommer)

Sallywood (Sally Kirkland, Tyler Steelman, Eric Roberts)

If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing (David Krumholtz, Kevin Corrigan, Michael Buscemi)

Re-Election (Adam Saunders, Tony Danza, Nathalie Kelley)

The Comic Shop (Jesse Metcalfe, Tristan Mays, Micah Giovanni)

This Too Shall Pass (Maxwell Jenkins, Ben Cockell, Jeremy Ray Taylor)

Casey Makes A Mixtape (Presley Richardson, Brandon Potter, Brad Leland)

Leo and Lou (Isak Férriz, Maggie Civantos, Julia Sulleiro)

LGBT Coming of age

She’s the He (Nico Carney, Misha Osherovich, Mark Indelicato)

Griffin In Summer (Everett Blunck, Melanie Lynskey, Kathryn Newton)

I Wish You All The Best (Corey Fogelmanis, Alexandra Daddario, Cole Sprouse)

LGBT stories with jokes

Nice Indian Boy (Karan Soni, Jonathan Groff, Zarna Garg)

I Don’t Understand You (Nick Kroll, Andrew Rannells, Amanda Seyfried)

Lavender Men (Pete Ploszek, Alex Esola, Ted Rooney)

Layla (Bilal Hasna, Self Esteem, Freddie Thorp)

“We’re having a baby and aren’t ready!” movies

Kinda Pregnant (Amy Schumer, Will Forte, Jillian Bell)

Premature (James Rottger, Elle Watson, Gail Watson)

Odes to friendship

Adult Best Friends (Delaney Buffet, Katie Corwin, Zachary Quinto)

The Lemurian Candidate (Dakota Shapiro, Oliver Cooper, Ben Groh)

Teens behaving badly

Almost Popular (Ruby Rose Turner, Reid Miller, Arden Myrin)

All Is Fine in ‘89 (Camille Blott, Tom Keat, Adam Lupis)

Culture clash

The Italians (Abigail Breslin, Matthew Daddario, Michelle Danner)

God Save The Tuches (Bernard Menez, Sarah Stern, Pierre Lottin)

Sequels and reboots

Happy Gilmore II (Adam Sandler, Bad Bunny, Margaret Qualley)

Spinal Tap II (Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer)

Freakier Friday (Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Vanessa Bayer)

Paddington in Peru (Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Antonio Banderas)

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy (Renee Zelwegger, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth)

Anaconda (Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Steve Zahn)

Now You See Me, Now You Don’t (Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Woody Harrelson)

Another Simple Favor (Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Henry Golding)

Nobody 2 (Bob Odenkirk, Sharon Stone, Christopher Lloyd)

The Family McMullen (Ed Burns, Connie Britton, Tracee Ellis Ross)

The Family Plan 2 (Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Monaghan, Kit Harrington)

Star vehicles

Paradise Records (Logic, Diedrich Bader, Kevin Corrigan)

Doin It (Lily Singh, Stephanie Beatriz, Utkarsh Ambudkar)

Audrey (Jackie van Beek, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Josephine Blazier)

Old people aren’t dead yet dramedies

Eleanor The Great (June Squibb, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jessica Hecht)

Old Guy (Christoph Waltz, Lucy Liu, Cooper Hoffman)

The Rule Of Jenny Pen (Geoffrey Rush, John Ligthow, Nathaniel Lees)

Familiar Touch (Kathleen Chalfant, H. Jon Benjamin, Andy McQueen)

One Big Happy Family (Linda Lavin, Dante Basco, Josh Fadem)

Lonely (Sandra Flagstad, Steve Seyfried, Mandy Evans)

Dancing On The Elephant (Amanda Brugel, Reid Price, Jordan Poole)

Ramona at Midlife (Yvonne Woods, Josh Radnor, Rosemarie Dewitt)

Four Mothers (James McArdle, Fionnula Flanagan, Anne Nolan)

Throwback corny family comedy

Alexander and the Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip (Eva Longoria, Cheech Marin, Jesse Garcia)

Funny Thing About Love (Jon Heder, Pat Finn, Barry Corbin)

Grow (Nick Frost, Dominic McLaughlin, Jeremy Swift)

Magnetosphere (Shayelin Martin, Colin Mochrie, Tara Strong)

Peas and Carrots (Kirrilee Berger, Amy Carlson, Jordan Bridges)

The Family Recipe (Stacey Van Gorder, Chris Connell, Larky Barnes)

Practically Married (KVON, Lorelei Linklater, David Maldonado)

The Healer (Oliver Jackson Cohen, Camilla Luddington, Jorge Garcia)

Silly farce

Deep Cover (Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, Nick Mohammed)

Don’t Tell Larry (Ed Begley Jr., Patty Guggenheim, Dot-Marie Jones)

BFFs (Michael Bacall, Aníta Briem, Taye Diggs)

Conventional rom coms

All of You (Brett Goldstein, Imogen Poots, Jenna Coleman)

Millers In Marriage (Ed Burns, Julianna Margulies, Patrick Wilson)

The Wrong Paris (Miranda Cosgrove, Pierson Fodé, Frances Fisher)

La Dolce Villa (Scott Foley, Violante Placido, Maia Reficco)

Champagne Problems (Minka Kelly, Tom Wozniczka, Flula Borg)

Under The Stars ​​(Alex Pettyfer, Toni Collette, Andy Garcia)

Love At First Spite (Marisa Dzintars, Tony DeSean, Beverly Jean)

Maintenance Required (Madeline Petsch, Matteo Lane, Jim Gaffigan)

Blue Eyed Girl (Eliza Coupe, Beau Bridges, Bridey Elliott)

Worth The Wait (Ross Butler, Lana Condo, Sung Kang)

My Oxford Year (Sofia Carson, Corey Mylchreest, Poppy Gilbert)

Carmen and Bolude (Michela Carattini, Bolude Watson, Liam Greinke)

Cute animal saves the day

The Friend (Bill Murray, Naomi Watts, Ann Dowd)

Merv (Zooey Deschanel, Charlie Cox, Chris Redd)

The Penguin Lessons (Steve Coogan, Jonathan Pryce, Vivian El Jaber) also in last year’s list!

Kangaroo (Ryan Corr, Brooke Satchwell, Rachel House)

Cheesy Christmas slop

A Very Jonas Christmas (Jonas Brothers, Chloe Bennett, Laverne Cox)

Oh. What. Fun. (Michelle Pfeiffer, Chloe Grace-Moretz, Dennis Leary)

Tinsel Town (Rebel Wilson, Kiefer Sutherland, Alice Eve)

Joy To The World (Emmanuelle Chriqui, Chad Michael Murray, Ayesha Curry)

All Is Merry and Bright (Eric Close, Sally Struthers, John O’Hurley)

Dog Patrol: Operation Santa Paws (Cuba Gooding Jr., Richard Portnow, Joseph Baena)

The Christmas Letter (Chevy Chase, Randy Quaid, Brian Doyle-Murray)

My Secret Santa (Alexandra Breckenridge, Tia Mowry, Ryan Eggold)

Jingle Ball Heist (Olivia Holt, Lucy Punch, Peter Serafinowicz)

A Merry Little Ex-Mas (Alicia Silverstone, Melissa Joan Hart, Jameela Jamil)

Christmas Karma (Boy George, Billy Porter, Eva Longoria)

Unexpected Christmas (Terrence Terrell, Lil Rel, Anna Maria Horsford)

Tangled Up In Christmas (Molly Flanagan, Tess Rianne Sullivan, Michael Joseph Nelson)

Let’s save a failing business

Green and Gold (Craig T. Nelson, Charlie Berens, M. Emmett Walsh)

Marcie’s (Jenn Ruzumna, Miski Farah Ali, Reginald André Jackson)

Workmates (Sophie Henderson, Matt Whelan, Akinehi Munroe)

Afternooner (Kate Marley, Dana KIppel, Monette Moio)

Almost comedic (there were moments!) but not quite

Black Bag (Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, Pierce Brosnan)

How To Train Your Dragon (Mason Thames, Gerard Butler, Nick Frost)

Hedda (Tessa Thompson, Nina Hoss, Imogen Poots)

Legend of Ochi (Finn Wolfhard, Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson)

Sovereign (Nick Offerman, Jacob Tremblay, Dennis Quaid)

A Blind Bargain (Crispin Glover, Jake Horowitz, Lucy Loken)

Henry Johnson (Shia Labeouf, Evan Jonigkeit, Chris Bauer)

The Actor (André Holland, Gemma Chan, Toby Jones)

The Home (Pete Davidson, John Glover, Ethan Phillips)

Signs of Life (Sarah-Jane Potts, David Ganly, Ashley McGuire)

Can I Get A Witness (Sandra Oh, Keira Jang, Joel Oulette)

Bonjour Tristesse (Chloe Sevigny, Claes Bang, Lily McInerny)

Hot Milk (Emma Mackey, Vicky Krieps, Fiona Shaw)

Under Fire (Dylan Sprouse, Mason Gooding, Emilio Rivera)

Afterburn (Dave Bautista, Samuel L. Jackson, Olga Kurylenko)

Control Freak (Kelly Marie Tran, Miles Robbins, Kieu Chinh)

Grand Tour (Gonçalo Waddington, Crista Alfaiate, Cláudio da Silva)

Sirāt (Sergi López, Bruno Núñez Arjona, Richard Bellamy)

Cold Wallet (Tony Cavalero, Josh Brener, Melonie Diaz)

Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight (Lexi Venter, Embeth Davidtz, Zikhona Bali)

Missed in ‘24

Accidental Texan (Thomas Haden Church, Carrie-Ann Moss, Bruce Dern)

The Heirloom (Matt Johnson, Ben Petrie, Leah Doz)

A Sloth Story (Leslie Jones, Teo Vergara, Olivia Vásquez)

Good Bad Things (Danny Kurtzman, Jessica Parker Kennedy, Samantha Robinson)

Little Bites (Krsy Fox, Barbara Crampton, Chaz Bono) (mostly horror but maybe a lil funny)

Daniel’s Gotta Die (Iggy Pop, Bob Saget, Mary Lynn Raskjub) (actually from 2022!)

Good Side Of Bad (Jules Bruff, Lexi Simonsen, Alex Quijano) (might’ve been a ‘23 release)

American Meltdown (Jacki Von Preysing, Nicolette Sweeney, Clayton Farris)

Thanks for getting to the end! See ya next year

Naturally, I thought, “I’d like to contribute.” So, I contacted the editor, he shared the guidelines with me and I drafted a story about when I worked for minimum wage scooping popcorn a few decades ago.

My story wasn’t selected.

So, I figured I’d share with you fine folks. Enjoy “The Price of Popcorn.”

I still remember summer 2009 like it was 16 years ago.

The big movies of the season were Pixar’s lovingly-rendered “Up,” Ron Howard’s “Da Vinci Code” follow-up “Angels and Demons,” Zach Galifianakis’ breakout “The Hangover” and, of course, the box office behemoth, Michael Bay’s “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”

At the time, I was three semesters deep into film school at Arizona State’s film school and thought I ought to apply to work at the Tempe Marketplace Harkins Theatre for the summer so I could have my Quentin Tarantino “film geek” origin story. Seemed only logical I’d be creating my own cinematic universes in no time. Once hired, my onboarding was a blur. In fact, all I recall now was being told to show up in suspenders and a cummerbund (yes, that’s really how you spell the word, heh heh), which I did. There was even a bowtie and name tag. I looked like real poindexter.

Within days of my short-lived employment, I felt like I’d found “my people.” Fellow cinephile nerds who were happy — nay, proud — to be paid minimum wage and walk around with a broom sweeping popcorn, tearing tickets for hours on end and asking customers “would you like Red Vines with that?”

Inside jokes quickly formed among my pasty, urbane clique. The bit I remember best was asking filmgoers as they walked out of a movie whether what they just saw “was the best film they’d ever seen?” After posing that question to dozens of people as they exited Sandra Bullock’s “The Proposal,” my new best friends and I would double over like we were the damn Kings of Comedy. Just primo stuff that made me laugh like I did in the sleepover days of middle school. Who said work wasn’t fun? I was having a ball and didn’t even mind the restrictive suspenders. It wasn’t exactly Tarantino at the video shop-type stuff but I don’t think I’d ever had a better few weeks of summer (even if this period of time was almost exclusively spent inside).

After a month as a glorified custodian where I cleaned puke, popcorn and other theater ephemera, a 16-year-old supervisor (SIDE NOTE: I was a few weeks away from turning 21), informed me I was ready to work concessions.

This was huge. The big leagues. Where the players came to play. Where I would learn the art of the upsell. Where I would learn of Farrah Fawcett’s death and then Michael Jackson’s a few hours later in the very same day.

Although I wasn’t interacting with my new friends as much while manning my station, deftly drizzling artificial butter and filling Cokes to the brim but never spilling felt like a calling for me. I could be silly with customers while doing something that felt more purposeful than idly walking around looking for scraps to quickly whisk into a dustpan. Plus, maybe just maybe, I could lay a Tarantino-like recommendation on an unsuspecting rube.

Yet, I grew cynical as I started to see the theater’s grift. Let me break their hustle down. Essentially, the cost of popcorn was next to nothing. At the end of each shift, industrial-sized trash bags filled with the buttery snack would be distributed to employees to take home. We’re talking like two months’ worth of popcorn. Just hours earlier, that refreshment would have sold for something like $100 altogether. Something was off. The popcorn was popping but the math simply wasn’t mathing.

Which leads us to our story.

A few weeks into concession life, I rebelled and started to actively devalue popcorn as a form of protest. What can I say? I was a self-righteous film school rabble rouser who had a bone to pick with the proverbial man.

I’d tell anyone I came into contact with that “popcorn is basically free yet the theaters charge an obscene amount for the cooked kernels. It makes no sense.” I must have repeated that potent line 50 times that summer. Got a lot of nods. Not many were as fired up as me about this flaw in the system.

The conflict came to a head when, by chance, a pretty good (but not great) friend of mine showed up at my register.

Not only did the two of us go way back (he and I both competed in “duo acting” against each other in high school speech and debate) but he also generously appeared in my admittedly Godawful student film the previous semester for free. The least I could do for the guy in this moment was hook him up with a small popcorn before his screening of the Jack Black/Michael Cera critically-panned two-hander “Year One,” directed by the late, great Harold Ramis.

Without putting too much thought into our interaction, I handed my pal the box (which five hours later when the shift ended would be rendered useless) and waved my next customer in. As I did, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

One of the supervisors (not the 16-year-old, thank God) saw what had transpired. “Why did you do that, Mark?” she asked.

Before answering, let me explain that I was wearing a name tag that said “Matt.” There’s no hackier bit in the book than calling someone by the wrong name but her gaffe here really made me laugh. How often are you wearing a nametag and someone still gets your name wrong? Come on, that’s funny.

Stifling chuckles, I admitted no wrongdoing before pleading my tried and true “we give popcorn away at night!” case. She wasn’t hearing my argument and sent me home early. A pit in my stomach formed. I don’t think I’d ever felt quite so…guilty.

That night, I helped two friends with a run and gun, gorilla-style short film. I had the least important job on set as the glorified PA but found myself in such a funk that I ruined the whole shoot. I’ll explain. We were filming on a parking structure without a permit. Just a skeleton crew and two actors trying our best not to make a scene. That is, until I leaned on a payphone and accidentally called local authorities. Don’t ask me how this happened but we were kicked off the premises ten minutes later and, now, I had wrecked the night for my buddies too. I couldn’t do anything right.

Five days later, the head boss at Harkins called. They asked me to come in. Obviously, I was getting fired. Still, I complied and wore my finest button-up shirt to be let go in like people did in 2009. As I took my seat in the back breakroom, the head boss told me, “not only did we catch you ‘stealing’ but you’re the perfect person to let go so other employees know that the company cracks down on ‘popcorn theft’” (this is a paraphrase that feels right and may not even be true now that I’m thinking about how the conversation went down). Just like that, that was that. I had no more summer plans.

Worse yet, for years, entering that multiplex was torture. People I used to laugh with now looked at me with pity when tearing my ticket for one to “Scott Pilgrim.” They remembered me, I remembered them, but we tried not to acknowledge what had happened. After a while, I stopped going there (unless, of course, there was a special screening like a “This Is 40” premiere which was accompanied by a Judd Apatow Q&A that I couldn’t miss!) out of shame.

Unbelievably, I got the last laugh. The next semester at school, I made a short sketch about “getting fired” from Build-A-Bear. Its “game” was that the boss had to let everyone go for hitting on her in various ways. I’ll be the first to admit the joke didn’t age well but somehow ended up getting selected for the Arizona State Film Festival that…took place in a Harkins Theatre. Not the same venue I’d been let go from (that would have been too sweet) but the indie, two-screen theater that was closer to our campus.

When we screened, the response couldn’t have been better. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything do that well in the 16 years since. And, you know what? That made everything worth the heartache years before. I wouldn’t take any of the brief experience back.

And, yes, in case you were wondering, in the years since, I’ve become a household name just like Quentin Tarantino.

PS: To this day, I hope my friend enjoyed that free, small popcorn. I didn’t want to burden him with the world’s dumbest “woe is me” story.

PPS: Popcorn should be like 75 cents. Charging $12 for a tub is highway robbery.

PPPS: I didn’t really become a household name but that felt like a good ending so why not.

PPPPS: That’s a lot of P’s

It’s me.

If you recall, I used to regularly drop into your inbox on Sunday nights. Now, I’m more of a wild card. A real surprise emailer. Bet you were shocked to see me in your inbox but here I am. And, honestly? I’m happy to be here. I missed this. I missed us.

Of course, “this email” isn’t just random. I have a reason to be chatting you up.

Truth be told, it’s an annoying reason.

The “reason” is self-indulgent, not really funny, and gonna end with me asking you for a favor (but not money! I swear I don’t want a penny from you!).

So, here goes nothing.

In 2011, I wrote a raunchy, short screenplay called “Space Babes” about a trip to Blockbuster with my brothers and mom. I thought it was pretty decent at the time and proudly showed the 11-pager to a writing partner of mine.

She wasn’t a fan.

After her rejection, I gave up on “Space Babes.” Shelved the thing. Put it out to pasture. The way I saw it, this Celtx file (remember Celtx?) would never see the light of day.

That is, until I caught wind of the Kinolime screenwriting competition a couple weeks back.

Feeling inspired, I signed up, revised “Space Babes,” entered the screenplay into their competition, crossed my hairy fingers and hoped for the best.

Usually the best never happens. I have so many rejection notices that I actually made a movie about the subject in 2023. Yet, somehow, against all odds, “Space Babes” is one of 26 finalists out of approximately 2,000 screenplays that were submitted to Kinolime. Just like the Carla Gallo character says in the excellent Apple TV show Platonic “don’t ask, don’t get.” I got!

Now! Here’s where you come in (oh, my God, I’m so sorry about this sentence).

To advance to the top ten and win $7,500 to fund “Space Babes,” I need your help (oh, no, this fully sounds like an email from a politician now).

All you have to do is go to this link, sign up, read “Space Babes” in full (which is quite dirty! I wrote it in 2011! Sorry!) and vote. Should take 15 minutes total (not exactly a walk in the park. Sorry!).

That’s it! If you do end up reading/voting, let me know and I’ll gladly do something for you in the 15-30 minute range in return. And please do ask, because, ya know “don’t ask, don’t get.”

Thank you so much for hearing me out. With that, I’ll see you in a couple months with my annual “All the comedy movies released in ____” post!

Your pal,

(insert my name here)

As a self-described cinephile, that’s an embarrassingly low number–especially for someone who lists “going to the movies” as one of their hobbies. To make matters worse, one of my two 2024 outings was a screening of my short film We Regret To Inform You at the Ocktober Film Fest (which, as you might have guessed, took place in October).

The only other time I hit the cineplex this past year was to see festival darling/moderate critical and commercial success story Saturday Night with a crowd. I plunked down $12 (my friend is an AMC A-List member and hooked it up), went to a matinee at an Upper West Side theater and winced for 90 minutes. The uncanny valley casting, smug references and half-baked attempts at recreating honest-to-goodness real comedy were alarmingly similar to a stage play I’d written about SNL’s failed 1980-81 season. Seeing them on AMC’s medium-sized screen confirmed my greatest fear: movies that take place backstage at a TV show don't make for truly compelling entertainment (30 Rock being the exception to the rule- that might be because it’s TV and not a movie, too). Sorry, Jason Reitman, I have to speak my truth and now feel free.

Other than that one disappointment, I’d say 2024 was a pretty damn good year for cinema regardless of what haters on Letterboxd may argue. Coming-of-age movies came into their own (I Like Movies, I Saw The TV Glow, Rap World and Janet Planet were all excellent additions to the subgenre), forgotten indies rocked (Scrambled, Lousy Carter, Good One and The Society of Magical Negroes deserved so much more love than they got) and heartfelt commentaries on motherhood had me laughing and crying (hats off to you, The Wild Robot and Nightbitch).

And, at the time of publication, I still haven’t even seen a lot of this year’s Best Picture nominees like The Brutalist, Anora, A Complete Unknown and so, so, so many more.

That’s not what this newsletter is about, though.

This is about a list. An annual Matt Levy list.

Every January, I set out on a mission. My goal is to document every single comedy film released over the course of the calendar year (although it can get quite confusing with festival versus theatrical and domestic versus international release dates) and prove that the genre known as “comedy” — which has been labeled as “dying” since the end of the Apatow heyday and maybe even before then — quietly continues to thrive.

To prove my point, I dug through reviews, box office reports, YouTube rabbit holes, best of lists and, after all my research, found 303 feature-length comedies that were released over the past 12 months. That’s 196 more than I found in 2022 and 105 more than in 2023.

There are some you’ve undoubtedly heard of (think Beetlejuice Beetlejuice), many that seemed to fall by the wayside (Joanna Arnow’s sublime The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed unfairly made next to no noise) and others from Romania, Italy, France, Sweden, Singapore and a handful of other countries but all existed and prove that this dying medium still has some juice left whether it be box office receipts wise or in terms of cinematic inventiveness.

SIDE NOTE: I included unintentional comedies — i.e. serious movies that made audiences laugh like Megalopolis and Trap — so “303 comedy movies released in 2025” isn’t exactly accurate. It’s more like 295 but you get the idea.

To share the fruits of this labor of love, I’ve linked each and every one of these 303 movies’ trailers and listed either a) their country of origin if the movie came from outside the U.S. or b) recognizable cast members under c) somewhat specific subgenres like “painstakingly realized, charming animation” and “Christmas ‘comedies.’”

I’ll admit my subgenre labeling is imperfect. Some movies ended up being tossed into categories by themselves like “road trip with family” or “comedy that’s way sexier than it has any right to be.” These obviously aren’t “real” subgenres but felt right. Also, I make all the rules here so there’s that.

Other subgenres I included are catchalls for films that were difficult to define. Therefore, a lot of movies fell under the “underseen slice of life gems about human beings” umbrella (this might be my favorite grouping of movies, FYI) even though they may fit better in another category. Honestly, truth be told, a couple of the flicks here might not even really qualify as comedies but I threw them in because the list would feel incomplete if I didn’t include them and as someone making a comprehensive list that includes the word “All” I felt an obligation to be a completist snob.

I promise this is all less complicated than it sounds. It’s really just a list.

OK, now, you’re probably wondering what’s the point of all this nonsense? To that, I say, fair question.

Basically, I see this massive list of all comedy movies released in a year (my third time doing this now) as a snapshot of a part of the year in film as well as a document of industry trends. There’s a lot to glean from what gets made and what a studio/indie comedy looks like in 2024.

Plus, I enjoy going down a rabbit hole and finding the end.

And I have to atone for my “only going to the movie theater two times in 2024” sin.

The most truthful answer of all though is that I’d like to think this mega list is a helpful resource for fellow obsessive cinephiles seeking out more off-the-beaten path comedies that might not show up on any year-end lists. For example, did anyone else here ever hear of Greedy People starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt? I didn’t and after watching the trailer I wanted to see this crime comedy caper. Looks great. That “hey, that movie looks good and I never heard of it” phenomenon happened to me dozens of times making this list and I was delighted to find so many movies that got little to no press (more on that in a second).

SIDEBAR: Streaming is a double-edged sword. It’s truly amazing that we can see almost any movie at any time. A true democratization of the medium. On the flip side, I hate that movies get dumped online without any pomp and circumstance like they’re YouTube videos now. A new film like, say Scrambled on Hulu for example, gets released on a platform, spends a few weeks on the homepage and then languishes away in the proverbial dollar bin of the streaming services only ever surfacing when you search “comedies” or type something into the search bar and come across the movie when looking for something with a similar title like Scrubs.

But I digress.

END SIDEBAR.

More than anything though, I’m tired of the played-out “there are no comedies being made anymore” argument that pops up occasionally in the news, podcasts and online articles. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, maybe we aren’t getting many original theatrical studio comedy releases other than The Fall Guy. Sure, a lot of comedies are sequels and reboots. BUT if you look a little closer, you’ll find thoughtful, goofy, giddy pics written or directed by auteurs like Charlie Kaufman, Ethan Coen, Guy Maddin, Richard Linklater and Sean Baker falling through the cracks (yes, they all had comedic movies released in 2024).

So…what are my takeaways after all this possibly pointless research? Well, what stuck out most to me was how poor Lionsgate’s marketing campaigns are. As mentioned above, a lot of these 303 movies made nary a cultural peep even though they had big-name cast members (looking at you, JGL movie). Many of those under-advertised movies were Lionsgate pictures. I hate to throw a production company under the bus (especially one that produced so many comedies!) but man did they drop the ball last year. So much talent, so little buzz. Here’s hoping they rebound in ‘25.

Also, of note, there were way more slice-of-life character studies in ‘24 than in ‘22 and ‘23 but fewer horror comedies. Are we over movies that heighten our fears and want to embrace the prickliness of everyday life instead? Or did the horror comedies from years past underperform and studios decided to cherry-pick even cheaper works hoping audiences would flock to them? Is this just random and I’m overthinking things?

Hard to tell but it happened.

Also, it pretty much goes without saying, but, at this point, there’s really very little money in making comedy films (unless you’re Inside Out 2, Deadpool or Beetlejuice). Many of the movies you’ll find listed below made next to nothing. I like that. I prefer passion projects over commerce machines. The fact that audiences didn’t discover a lot of these flicks is a shame but hopefully they will (and, heck, maybe you, the reader here, will even seek out one or two of these movies after skimming this insanely long list that took way, way, way too long to compile).

Alright! You made it past the prologue! Congrats!

Now, feel free to speed read or pore over (open some tabs! The links are legit!) this mega list. It’s for you. Enjoy and see ya at the movies this year (hopefully).

NOTE: Films that aren’t in English have the country of origin listed instead of actors. There are a few exceptions where the big names in the cast are well-known enough — looking at you, Jackie Chan — that I included them.

NOTE II: If I overlooked anything that you think should be on the list, let me know. There has to be a few I missed.

Semi-humorous prestige films

Anora (starring Mikey Madison, Mark Eidelstein, Yuriy Borisov)

A Real Pain (starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Jennifer Grey)

Conclave (starring Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rosselini)

The Substance (starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid)

A Different Man (starring Sebastian Stan, Adam Pearson, Michael Shannon)

Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World (Romania; technically released in the US in 2024)

La Chimera (Italy; starring Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rosselini)

Cash grab sequel/reboots

Inside Out 2 (featuring the voices of Amy Poehler, Lewis Black, Tony Hale)

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (starring Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara)

Mean Girls (starring Angourie Rice, Reneé Rapp, Tina Fey)

Mufasa (featuring the voices of Aaron Pierre, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Thandie Newton)

Bad Boys: Ride Or Die (starring Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Rhea Seehorn)

Despicable Me 4 (featuring the voices of Steve Carell, Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig)

Axel F (starring Eddie Murphy, Paul Reiser, Joseph Gordon-Levitt)

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (starring Finn Wolfhard, Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon)

Garfield: The Movie (starring Chris Pratt, Samuel L. Jackson, Cecily Strong)

Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (starring Ben Schwartz, Jim Carrey, Keanu Reeves)

Kung Fu Panda 4 (featuring the voices of Jack Black, Viola Davis, Awkwafina)

Road House (starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Conor McGregor, Jessica Williams)

My Spy: The Eternal City (starring Dave Bautista, Craig Robinson, Ken Jeong)

One-of-a-kind surreal visions

Sasquatch Sunset (starring Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keough, Nathan Zellner)

Problemista (starring Julio Torres, Tilda Swinton, RZA)

Música (starring Rudy Mancuso, Camila Mendes, J.B. Smoove)

The American Society of Magical Negroes (starring Justice Smith, David Alan Grier, Drew Tarver)

KInds of Kindness (starring Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe)

The End (starring Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, George Mackay)

Rumours (starring Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander, Charles Dance)

Blockbuster action comedies

Hit Man (starring Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Retta)

The Fall Guy (starring Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Hannah Waddingham)

Panda Plan (China; starring Jackie Chan)

The Union (starring Mark Wahlberg, Halle Berry, J.K. Simmons)

Boy Kills World (starring Bill Skarsgård, H. Jon Benjamin, Sharlto Copley)

Nice Girls (France)

Throwback big-budget studio comedies with bona fide movie stars that flopped

Argylle (starring Bryce Dallas Howard, John Cena, Sam Rockwell)

Wolfs (starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Amy Ryan)

The Instigators (starring Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Hong Chau)

Fly Me To The Moon (starring Channing Tatum, Scarlett Johansson, Ray Romano)

Post-modern superhero films

Deadpool & Wolverine (starring Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Matthew McFayden)

The People’s Joker (starring Vera Drew, Bob Odenkirk, Tim Heidecker)

Venom 3: The Last Dance (starring Tom Hardy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple)

Joker: Folie a Deux (starring Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson)

Borderlands (starring Cate Blanchett, Jack Black, Kevin Hart)

Underseen slice-of-life gems about human beings

Dad and Step Dad (starring Colin Burgess, Anthony Oberbeck, Brian Fiddyment)

Free Time (starring Colin Burgess, Rajat Suresh, Holmes)

Between The Temples (starring Jason Schwartzman, Carol Kane, Robert Smigel)

Hard Truths (starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin, Bryony MIller)

The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed (starring Joanna Arnow, Scott Cohen, Babak Tafti)

His Three Daughters (starring Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, Carrie Coon)

Good One (starring Lily Collias, James Le Gros, Danny McCarthy)

Ghostlight (starring Keith Kupferer, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, Hanna Dworkin)

Suze (starring Michaela Watkins, Charlie Gillespie, Sara Waisglass)

Bird (starring Barry Keoghan, Franz Rogowski, Nykiya Adams)

Lousy Carter (starring David Krumholtz, Martin Starr, Olivia Thirlby)

Stress Positions (starring John Early, Theda Hammel, Qaher Harhash)

Gasoline Rainbow (starring Micah Bunch, Tony Aburto, Nichole Dukes)

Sometimes I Think About Dying (starring Daisy Ridley, Dave Merheje, Meg Stalter)

All Happy Families (starring Josh Radnor, Rob Huebel, Becky Ann Baker)

A Traveler’s Needs (Korea; starring Isabelle Huppert)

On Becoming A Guinea Fowl (Zambia)

The Monk and The Gun (Bhutan)

Bad Behaviour (starring Jennifer Connelly, Ben Wishaw, Alice Englert)

Treasure (starring Lena Dunham, Stephen Fry, Tomasz Wlosok)

The Year Between (Steve Buscemi, Wyatt Oleff, J. Smith Cameron)

The Problem With People (starring Paul Reiser, Colm Meaney, Jane Levy)

60 Miles North (starring Edward Crawford, Jack Mulcahy, Marsha Dietlein)

Crossing (starring Deniz Dumanli, Lucas Kankava, Mzia Arabuli)

Thoughtful satire with a female lead

Blink Twice (starring Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum, Alia Shawkat)

Nightbitch (starring Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Zoe Chao)

Woman of the Hour (starring Anna Kendrick, Tony Hale, Pete Holmes)

I Used To Be Funny (starring Rachel Sennott, Jason Jones, Caleb Hearon)

Skincare (starring Elizabeth Banks, Lewis Pullman, Nathan Fillion)

Quirky indies that wear their Wes Anderson influence on their sleeve

Universal Language (Canada)

We Were Dangerous (New Zealand)

The Falling Star (France)

Club Zero (starring Mia Wasikowska, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Elsa Zylberstein)

Darla In Space (starring Alex E. Harris, Constance Shulman, Thomas Jay Ryan)

Bookworm (starring Elijah Wood, Nell Fisher, Michael Smiley)

Timestalker (starring Alice Lowe, Jacob Anderson, Nick Frost)

Women finding their way in the world

Drugstore June (starring Esther Povitsky, Haley Joel Osment, Bobby Lee)

Downtown Owl (starring Lily Rabe, Vanessa Hudgens, Ed Harris)

Late Bloomers (starring Karen Gillan, Jermaine Fowler, Kevin Nealon)

The Young Wife (starring Kiersey Clemons, Judith Light, Leon Bridges)

Chosen Family (starring Heather Graham, Julia Stiles, Andrea Savage)

Cora Bora (starring Meg Stalter, Darrell Hammond, Chelsea Peretti)

Space Cadet (starring Emma Roberts, Tom Hopper, Poppy Liu)

Spread (starring Elizabeth Gillies, Harvey Keitel, Diedrich Bader)

Addition (starring Teresa Palmer, Joe Dempsie, Eamon Farren)

Sneaky, smart high-concept set in 2000 about dudes finding their way in the world

Y2K (starring Rachel Zegler, Kyle Mooney, Jaeden Martell)

Let’s Start A Cult (starring Stavros Halkias, Wes Haney, Daniel Simonsen)

Coming of age with jokes

I Like Movies (starring Isaiah Lehtinen, Percy Hynes White, Romina D'Ugo)

Rap World (starring Connor O’Malley, Eric Rahill, Jack Bensinger)

Janet Planet (starring Julianne Nicholson, Zoe Ziegler, Elias Koteas)

The 4:30 (starring Austin Zajur, Nicholas Cirillo, Ken Jeong)

Didi (starring Izaac Wang, Joan Chen, Mahaela Park)

Fitting In (starring Maddie Ziegler, Emily Hampshire, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai)

Snack Shack (starring Gabriel LaBelle, Conor Sherry, David Costabile)

Uproar (starring Julian Dennison, Rhys Darby, Minnie Driver)

The Moon and Back (starring Isabel May, Missi Pyle, Nat Faxon)

Alemania (Argentina)

We Grown Now (starring Blake Cameron James, Gian Knight Ramirez, S. Epatha Merkerson)

Wah-Wah (starring Nicholas Hoult, Emily Watson, Gabriel Byrne)

Popular Theory (starring Chloe East, Cheryl Hines, Marc Evan Jackson)

Camp (starring The Sklar Brothers, Joey King, Nolan Gould)

Big Boys (starring David Johnson III, Isaac Krasner, Dora Madison)

Boot Camp (starring Rachel Boudwin, Drew Ray Tannner, Emmanuelle Chriqui)

The Mountain (starring Elizabeth Atkinson, Reuben Francis, Terence Daniel)

Painstakingly rendered, charming animation

The Wild Robot (featuring the voices of Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Matt Berry)

Wallace and Gromit: A Vengeance Most Fowl (featuring the voices of Ben Whitehead, Peter Kay, Diane Morgan)

Memoir of a Snail (featuring the voices of Sarah Snook, Eric Bana, Kodi Smit-McPhee)

Orion and the Dark (featuring the voices of Jacob Tremblay, Paul Walter Hauser, Colin Hanks)

Flow (Latvia)

The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (featuring the voices of Eric Bauza, Laraine Newman, Wayne Knight)

Robot Dreams (Spain/France production)

Chicken For Linda (France/Italy production)

Hitpig (featuring the voices of Jason Sudeikis, Rainn Wilson, Lilly Singh)

Dumb and proud of it

Hundreds of Beavers (starring Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Olivia Graves)

Ricky Stanicky (starring John Cena, Zac Efron, Andrew Santino)

Brothers (starring Peter Dinklage, Josh Brolin, Brendan Fraser)

Chosen Family (starring Heather Graham, Julia Stiles, Thomas Lennon)

Deaner ‘89 (starring Paul Spence, Star Slade, Will Sasso)

Mind-bending, trippy comedies with lots of rules

Tuesday (starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lola Petticrew, Arinze Kene)

Self Reliance (starring Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick, Andy Samberg)

Jackpot (starring Awkwafina, John Cena, Simu Liu)

The Present (starring Isla Fisher, Greg Kinnear, Shay Rudolph)

Me, Myself and the Void (starring Kelly Marie Tran)

It’s What’s Inside (starring James Morosini, Brittany O’Grady, Gavin Leatherwood)

Omni Loop (starring Ayo Edebiri, Mary-Louise Parker, Carlos Jacott)

The Secret Art of Human Flight (starring Paul Raci, Grant Rosenmeyer, Lucy DeVito)

The Invisibles (starring Tim Blake Nelson, Gretchen Mol, Bruce Greenwood)

Horror meets Ha Ha

Heretic (starring Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East)

Speak No Evil (starring James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy)

Late Night With The Devil (starring David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss)

The Front Room (starring Brandy, Kathryn Hunter, Andrew Burnap)

The Humanist Vampire (French-Canadian)

Destroy All Neighbors (starring Jonah Ray, Alex Winter, Jon Daly)

For Sale (starring Andrew Roth, Corinne Britti, Ellie Torrez)

Here For Blood (starring Shawn Roberts, Joelle Farrow, Marc-Andre Boulanger)

Krazy House (starring Nick Frost, Alicia Silverstone, Kevin Connolly)

Mr. Crocket (starring Elvis Nolasco, Ayden Galvin, Alex Akpobome)

The Prank (starring Rita Moreno, Talia Jackson, Nathan Janak)

Founders Day (starring William Russ, Emilia McCarthy, Devin Druid)

The Birthday (starring Corey Feldman, Erica Prior, Jack Taylor)

Get Away (starring Nick Frost, Aisling Bea, Sebastian Croft)

Forever Home (starring Drew Leatham, Sammie Lideen, Cody Hunt)

Departing Seniors (starring Ignacio Diaz-Silverio, Maisie Merlock, Yani Gellman)

Dead Talent Society (Taiwan)

Dead Mail (starring John Fleck, Micah Fitzgerald, Tomas Boykin)

You shouldn’t date that inhuman creature

Lisa Frankenstein (starring Kathryn Newton, Cole Sprouse, Carla Gugino)

Your Monster (starring Melissa Barrera, Tommy Dewey, Kimiko Glenn)

Intermedium (starring Beau Minniear, Emily Keefe, Jesse Posey)

Unconventional, genre-bending sorta historical recountings

Saturday Night (starring Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, JK Simmons)

Unfrosted (starring Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Gaffigan, Melissa McCarthy)

The Apprentice (starring Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova)

Queer (starring Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman)

Better Man (starring Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton)

Kneecap (starring Michael Fassbender, Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh)

Pavements (starring Joe Keery, Stephen Malkmus, Tim Heidecker)

Daaaaaali! (France; directed by Quentin Dupieux)

Winner (starring Kathryn Newton, Zach Galifianakis, Connie Britton)

Shirley (starring Regina King, Lance Reddick, Lucas Hedges)

Joy (starring Thomasin McKenzie, Bill Nighy, James Norton)

Goofy sports flicks

The Gutter (starring Susan Sarandon, Paul Reiser, D’arcy Carden)

The Underdoggs (starring Snoop Dogg, Mike Epps, George Lopez)

Sweet Dreams (starring Johnny Knoxville, Theo Von, Bobby Lee)

You Gotta Believe (starring Luke Wilson, Greg Kinnear, Sarah Gadon)

YOLO (China)

Young people rom-coms

My Old Ass (starring Aubrey Plaza, Maisy Stella, Percy Hynes White)

Incoming (Mason Thames, Kaitlin Olson, Bobby Cannavale)

Prom Dates (starring Antonia Gentry, Patty Guggenheim, Terry Hu)

Parachute (starring Courtney Eaton, Thomas Mann, Joel McHale)

Young Werther (starring Allison Pill, Iris Apatow)

Sweethearts (starring Kiernan Shipka, Chloe Troast, Caleb Hearon)

Technically Together (starring Ripley Cooley, Lucas Booth, Cooper Boothe)

Third Wheel (starring Anthony Casabianca, Jason Tamarkin, Kelsey Tarantino)

Lovebug (starring Logan Pepper)

Elevator (Singapore)

Rom-coms with slightly older people

Matt and Mara (starring Matt Johnson, Deragh Campbell, Simon Reynolds)

Players (starring Gina Rodriguez, Damon Wayans Jr., Tom Ellis)

Max and Molli in the Future (starring Aristotle Athari, Zosia Mamet, Grace Kuhlenschmidt)

Upgraded (starring Camila Mendes, Marisa Tomei, Andrew Schulz)

French Girl (starring Zach Braff, Vanessa Hudgens, Evelyne Brochu)

Irish Wish (starring Lindsay Lohan, Ayesha Curry, Ed Speleers)

Find Me Falling (starring Harry Connick Jr., Ali Fumiko Whitney, Agni Scott)

With Love and a Major Organ (starring Anna Maguire, Hamza Haq, Veena Sood)

The Breaking Ice (China-Singapore)

The Good Half (Nick Jonas, Elisabeth Shue, Matt Walsh)

Which Brings Me To You (starring Lucy Hale, Nat Wolff, Genevieve Angelson)

Running On Empty (starring Keir Gilchrist, Jim Gaffigan, Jay Pharoah)

Wallbanger (starring Kelli Berglund, Amadeus Serafini, Cathy Ang)

This Time Next Year (starring Lucien Laviscount, Sophie Cookson, John Hannah)

Breakup Season (starring Chandler Riggs, Samantha Isler, James Urbaniak)

Mother of the Bride (starring Brooke Shields, Miranda Cosgrove, Benjamin Bratt)

Dandelion (starring Kiki Layne, Thomas Doherty, Melanie Nicholas-King)

My Favourite Cake (Iran)

The Nature of Love (France)

Volveiris (Spain, France)

Gondola (Germany, dialogue-free)

Crime movies with comedic elements

Drive-Away Dolls (starring Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein)

The Last Stop In Yuma County (starring Jim Cummings, Faizon Love, Richard Brake)

Greedy People (starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Himesh Patel, Lily James)

LaRoy, Texas (starring John Magaro, Steve Zahn, Dylan Baker)

Carry-On (starring Taron Egerton, Jason Bateman, Dean Norris)

The Killer’s Game (starring Dave Bautista, Terry Crews, Sofia Boutella)

Role Play (starring David Oyelowo, Kaley Cuoco, Bill Nighy)

Lift (starring Kevin Hart, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Vincent D'Onofrio)

Lake George (starring Carrie Coon and Shea Wigham)

Marmalade (starring Joe Keery, Aldis Hodge, Camila Morrone)

The Trouble With Jessica (starring Olivia Williams, Alan Tudyk, Rufus Sewell)

Stealing Jokes (starring Jeff Dye, Michael Rappaport, Ariana DeBose)

The Balconettes (France)

Plastic Guns (France)

Trouble (Sweden)

We’re having a baby! The movie

Babes (starring Ilana Glazer, Michelle Buteau, Hasan Minhaj)

Another Happy Day (starring Lauren Lapkus, Carrie Coon, Tim Kazurinksy)

Scrambled (starring Leah McKendrick, Ego Nwodim, Andrew Santino)

Plan B (starring Jamie Lee, Jon Heder, Subhah Agarwal)

High society skewering

Coup! (starring Peter Sarsgaard, Billy Magnussen, Fisher Stevens)

The Line (starring Alex Wolff, John Malkovich, Halle Bailey)

The Duel (starring Dylan Sprouse, Callan McAuliffe, Patrick Warburton)

Linda (Argentina)

The Arrival (starring Pooyah Mohseni, Peter Bradbury, Nick Hamparyan)

Old folks foibles

Thelma (starring June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree)

The Fabulous Four (starring Susan Sarandon, Bette Midler, Megan Mullally)

Summer Camp (starring Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates, Alfre Woodard)

Arthur’s Whiskey (starring Diane Keaton, Patricia Hodge, Hayley Mills)

The Last Rifleman (starring Pierce Brosnan, John Amos, Clémence Poésy)

The Nana Project (starring Mercedes Ruehl, Tony Todd, Morgan Fairchild)

I’ll Be Right There (Edie Falco, Michael Rappaport, Charlie Tahan)

Older woman has a relationship with a younger dude

Babygirl (starring Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas)

A Family Affair (starring Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, Joey King)

The Idea Of You (starring Anne Hathaway, Nicholas Galitzine, Reid Scott)

Lonely Planet (starring Laura Dern, Liam Hemsworth, Diana Silvers)

Sly industry sendup

First Time Female Director (starring Chelsea Peretti, Jordan Peele, Amy Poehler)

Microbudget (starring Patrick Noth, Bobby Moynihan, Maria Bamford)

My First Film (starring Odessa Young, Jane Wickline, Phillip Ettinger)

Feel-good heartwarmers

The Supremes At Earl’s All You Can Eat (starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Sanaa Lathan and Uzo Aduba)

My Penguin Friend (starring Jean Reno, Adriana Barraza, Rocio Hernandez)

Tokyo Cowboy (Japan)

How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (Thailand)

Dog On Trial (France)

Throwback, family-friendly comedies

If (starring Ryan Reynolds, Steve Carell, John Krasinski)

Harold and the Purple Crayon (starring Zachary Levi, Zooey Deschanel, Jemaine Clement)

The Family Pack (France)

Kangaroo (Australia)

Uncomfortable thrillers with a dark comedic streak

Strange Darling (starring Willa Fitzgerald, Kyle Gallner, Madisen Beaty)

Wicked Little Letters (starring Olivia Colman, Jesse Buckley, Timothy Spall)

MIller’s Girl (starring Martin Freeman, Jenna Ortega, Dagmara Dominczyk)

Mother, Couch (starring Ewan McGregor, Ellen Burstyn, Rhys Ifans)

American Dreamer (starring Peter Dinklage, Shirley MacLaine, Danny Glover)

Comedy that’s way sexier than it has any right to be

Parthenope (starring Celeste Dalla Porta, Stefania Sandrelli, Gary Oldman)

Christmas “comedies”

Red One (starring The Rock, Chris Evans, J.K. Simmons)

Hot Frosty (starring Lacey Chabert, Dustin Milligan, Craig Robinson)

Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point (starring Michael Cera, Elsie Fisher, Gregg Turkington)

Nutcrackers (starring Ben Stiller, Linda Cardellini, a slew of annoying kids)

Dear Santa (starring Jack Black, Keegan Michael Key, shudder Post Malone)

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (starring Judy Greer, Pete Holmes, Lauren Graham)

Our Little Secret (starring Lindsay Lohan, Kristin Chenoweth, Jon Rudnitsky)

Jack In Time For Christmas (starring Jack Whitehall, Michael Bublé, Jimmy Fallon)

A Sudden Case Of Christmas (Danny DeVito, Andie MacDowell, Wilmer Valderrama)

Meet Me Next Christmas (starring Christina Milian, Devale Ellis, Kofi Siriboe)

Get Him Back For Christmas (starring Alexa PenaVega, Alan Powell, Victoria Jackson)

LGBTQUIA+ laughers

Am I Okay? (starring Dakota Johnson, Jermaine Fowler, Tig Notaro)

Good Grief (starring Dan Levy, Luke Evans, Kaitlyn Dever)

Bonus Track (Great Britain; featuring Josh O’Connor)

Summer Solstice (starring Bobbi Salvör Menuez, Marianne Rendón, Mila Myles)

What A Feeling (Austria)

Fantastical goofs

The Invisble Raptor (starring Sean Astin, Larry Hankin, Caitlin McHugh)

Seize Them! (starring Aimee Lou Wood, Nicola Coughlan, Nick Frost)

Road trip with family

Bleeding Love (starring Ewan McGregor, Clara McGregor, Kim Zimmer)

Silly showbiz satire from overseas

Audrey (Australia)

The Spin (Ireland)

Heavier Trip (Finland)

Character study dramedies that are a little heavy on the drama

Ezra (starring Bobby Cannavale, Rose Byrne, Whoopi Goldberg)

Suncoast (starring Woody Harrelson, Laura Linney, Nico Parker)

Reverse The Curse (starring David Duchovny, Logan Marshall-Green, Stephanie Beatriz)

Little Brother (starring J.K. Simmons, Daniel Diemer, Philip Ettinger)

Notice To Quit (starring Michael Zegen, Kasey Bella Suarez, Nell Verlaque)

And Mrs. (starring Aisling Bea, Billie Lourd, Colin Hanks)

Allswell In New York (starring Daphne Rubin-Vega, Bobby Cannavale)

Drive Back Home (starring Alan Cumming, Charlie-Creed Miles, Clare Coulter)

The Critic (starring Ian McKellen, Gemma Arterton, Mark Strong)

Heightened (starring Sara Friedman, Dave Register, Mike Mitchell)

Empire Waist (starring Mia Kaplan, Missi Pyle, Rainn Wilson)

Goodbye, Hello (starring Steve Guttenberg, Alan Trong, Hollie Bahar)

Allen Sunshine (starring Vincent Leclerc, Joseph Whitebird, Catherine Souffront)

Out of My Mind (starring Phoebe-Rae Taylor, Rosemarie Dewitt, Luke Kirby)

Preachy fish out of water social commentaries about the difficulties of parenting

A Great Divide (starring Ken Jeong)

Goodrich (starring Michael Keaton, Mila Kunis and Andie MacDowell)

The Penguin Lessons (starring Steve Coogan, Jonathan Pryce, a boatload of penguins)

Docs about comedy

Will and Harper (about Will Ferrell’s friendship with Harper Steele)

Brats (about the Brat Pack)

Sorry/Not Sorry (about the Louis C.K. fallout)

Breaking The Fourth Wall (about open mics at a venue called Fourth Wall in LA)

The World According To Allee Willis (about the life of a Pee Wee’s Playhouse artist)

Cringey right-wing attempts at humor

Am I Racist (Matt Walsh goes undercover as a DEI scholar)

Religious fare that looks at Christianity through a comedic lens

The Book of Clarence (starring Lakeith Stanfield, James McAvoy, Benedict Cumberbatch)

Chronicles of a Wandering Saint (Argentina)

Not Another Church Movie (starring Jamie Foxx, Vivica A. Fox, Mickey Rourke)

Unintentionally funny, future cult classic midnight movies

Megalopolis (starring Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza)

Madame Web (starring Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Adam Scott)

The Beekeeper (starring Jason Statham, Josh Hutcherson, Jeremy Irons)

Trap (starring Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan)

Poolman (starring Chris Pine, Annette Bening, Danny DeVito)

Love Bomb (starring Jessie Andrews, Zane Holtz, Josh Caras)

Silly murder mystery

Reunion (starring Lil Rel Howery, Jillian Bell, Billy Magnussen)

Fun-loving war picture

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (starring Henry Cavill, Henry Golding, Cary Elwes)

I knew you’d stick around to the bitter end!

Since we’re still hanging out, I wanted to list movies that are ALMOST comedies or featured comedians or have comedic elements or were released in 2023 and I missed them. They’re close to qualifying for the list but including them would be doing them a disservice.

So, here’s that.

Spaceman (starring Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, Paul Dano)

The Beast (starring Léa Seydoux, George Mackay, Guslagie Malanda)

How To Have Sex (Daisy Jelley, Mia McKenna-Bruce, Samuel Bottomley)

Fremont (starring Anaita Wali Zada, Gregg Turkington, Jeremy Allen White)

The Room Next Door (starring Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, John Turturro)

The Unknown Country (starring Lily Gladstone, Raymond Lee, Richard Ray Whitman)

Love Again (starring Priyanka Chopra, Nick Jonas, Celine Dion)

The Legend of Catclaws Mountain (starring Hayden Hishaw,Robert Davi, and Dee Wallace

Wildcat (starring Maya Hawke, Liam Neeson, Laura Linney)

Susie Searches (Kiersey Clemons, Rachel Sennott, Ken Marino)

Love Lies Bleeding (starring Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Ed Harris)

I Saw The TV Glow (starring Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Fred Durst)

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Thailand)

Tell That To The Winter Sea (starring Amber Anderson, Greta Bellamacina, Jessica Plummer)

Sing Sing (starring Colman Domingo, Clarence Maclin, Paul Raci)

Fair Play (starring Alden Ehrenreich, Phoebe Dynevor, Eddie Marsan)

Last Summer (France)

Grand Tour (Portugal)

Wicked (starring Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Bowen Yang)

Challengers (starring Zendaya, Mike Faist, Josh O’Connor)

OK, now we’re really done. I think?

If it got your attention, I’m happy you’re here. Welcome back, pal. Missed you.

If you’re annoyed by the long subject but decided to click because it baited you in, haha, I got you and now I’m making you read more nonsense before getting to the good stuff. Heh heh. You’re still reading. This is a pretty good bit…oh no, you’re leaving. Wait! Don’t go!

Phew, you’re still here. Thanks. I knew you were cool.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I thought this was a funny email subject:

It’s very long! Hahaha. Good stuff. Been waiting for weeks to share that.

OK, now for the real thing. Here’s what I wanted to tell you:

My wife Anna Paone was on Jeopardy. You know the show. It’s the one with the questions and the answers and the blue screen and the anecdotes and the buzzers and the instantly recognizable “doo doo doo doo” song that is always lurking in our collective unconscious. You know it I bet.

Anna’s episode aired on July 9 and led to a flurry of internet articles claiming she was robbed. I agree with all of them! Anna is practically a folk hero now, which is quite cool.

So, I decided it was my solemn duty to ride her coattails interview her about the Jeopardy experience from how she became interested in the show to how much our airfare cost. You can find our enlightening 54-minute chat here:

Also, I wanted to plug my movies! I gotta say I like plugging movies more than making movies now that I think about it. None of the work, all of the glory.

The first is Dungeons. It’s a 13-minute short.

Here’s the synopsis:

Ashley (Mecca McDonald) would rather do than play "Dungeons and Dragons" on a Friday night. It's not her younger brother Ryan's (Manny Simmons‬) thing though. Rather than play, the two work out unresolved sibling issues they've never talked about before.

Thanks for watching!

Up next, is my short We Regret To Inform You, which is currently making the festival rounds (God, I love saying that).

It stars Anna Paone, C.W. Headley and Michael Margetis.

The logline for this one is:

When a filmmaker receives a rejection note from a film festival, he heads to the organization's screening room to take matters into his own hands.

Here’s a short 30-second trailer.

OK, gotta go. It’s bedtime (10:15, which is a pretty reasonable hour).

Bless up and level up,

Ol’ Dirty Millennial

How are things? Do you have 200 things to read but decided to go with this because it’s kind of like comfort food?

If so, happy you’re here. Been too long. We don’t hang out anymore. That’s my bad. Seriously, I know you’ve got a lot on your plate but my B. For real.

Anyway………..

Wanted to keep you posted on what I’ve been up to — narcissist alert lmao heh heh — and share a short story based on a flight I took a couple weeks ago on American Airlines.

Before that though, the comedy updates.

1.) I put two Instagram Reel sketches on…Instagram Reels recently. That’s where they go, I think. The first is a video of me reviewing the five worst things I ate last year and number two is a parody song called “My Phlegmy Valentine.” Bonus points if you get the joke!!!

2.) Last year, I wrote and co-directed (with Aaron Bryan) a lil movie called We Regret To Inform You starring Anna Paone (m’wife), CW Headley (m’friend) and Michael Margetis (m’favorite improviser). I think it’s very funny and you should hopefully hear more about it soonish.

Here’s a still from the movie:

3.) I’ve been doing a dumb bit on Twitter (or X, blech) where I start a tweet every single day with “Today’s the Super Bowl of” and then write a “joke” about what' the big news story of the day is. I’d say the best one was last year when I wrote on this on 4/20:

Not bad.

So, yeah, it’s been going for over a year (to diminishing returns) and is a novel writing challenge (for me at least). If this interests you in the slightest, you can see all my “bits” here.

There’s probably more that I know I’ll think of once I hit publish but I can always write another one of these things. So there’s that.

OK, now for the main attraction.

Drumroll…

Here’s that short story I teased up top. It’s called Middle Seat. There are seven footnotes! I believe that’s a Guinness World Record. Sorry, David Foster Wallace. You’ve been bested.

Enjoy.

“Oh, no.”

Matt hovered over every single aisle on American Airlines’ seating chart for their March 16 flight from JFK to PHX. After triple checking, it looked like there were no ABC or DEF rows together.

This was a problem because Matt was traveling with his wife and infant daughter. They all needed to sit together for the five-hour trip1. 

So, he did what anyone would do in this situation. Matt booked seats for his wife and daughter next to each other and one for himself in the row ahead of them. In his mind, that was pretty good. A win, even.

“You did what?” Anna, his wife, cried. 

Matt explained that she’d be sitting with their one-year-old and he’d try to switch with someone when they were onboard there so he could sit next to her. It all made perfect sense in his head.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Anna said.

A long sigh.

“Why not,” Matt asked, trying to keep his cool. He’d already spent 15 minutes on this. That was a long time for him.

“No one in their right mind wants to trade an aisle for a middle.”

She had a point. Middles are the cheese2 of the sky.

“Get an aisle or window seat as trade bait.”

Hot dog! That was a stellar idea. Now they were cooking. 

Honestly, at this point, Matt was just glad they were ignoring the fact that they were in this mess because he booked the trip last minute. 

This is just what happens when you wait to do things. You get stuck with a problem you didn’t even know existed. 

Anyway, he booked the aisle seat — not the middle — ahead of them. That way, this stranger they’d be bartering with would have virtually the same seat. Genius.

Then, they waited five weeks before the flight. 

The prospect of not sitting together for the cross country trip lingered in Matt’s fragile, fearful mind.

Maybe they should cancel, push back the vacation and find another airline?

At night, Matt googled “is there an app where you can bump someone from their seat for a fee?” There wasn’t3.

Matt Googled what other people do in this scenario. Some (the famed parenting newsletter ScaryMommy) say to politely ask a gate agent for help; others (a guy on Reddit) suggest flying JetBlue where they try to seat parents with their kids as best they can.

Finally, after worrying way too much about something pretty small4, Matt decided to role play the scenario with Anna.

“OK, I’ll be you and you’ll be the person coming to our aisle,” Matt explained.

His tired wife gave him a thumbs up.

“You’re gonna have to get up and walk over to the row.”

She shook her head no. This was a ridiculous ask.

“Fine. Pretend to approach the aisle.” 

Anna put on an indiscernible accent. “What’s going on here?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Matt said in a cracking high-pitched voice. “My baby just pooped everywhere. Do you mind if my husband sits here and helps me clean? You can have his window seat over there.” 

Anna stopped him.

“That’s not what I sound like.”

She wasn’t wrong; the impression was pretty far off. 

The poop concept was strong, though. No one wants to sit next to poop. A middle seat is always preferable to close poop proximity. Vomit could work as a backup plan, too. 

If the bodily function excuse didn’t come through, Matt and Anna agreed they could offer to give the unlucky person near us 100 bucks. In cash. Maybe they’d just feel sorry for them at that point and say “No, it’s fine.”

Eventually, they landed on the best solution of all. Breastfeeding. Of course! If a stranger doesn’t let a family sit together in that situation, Anna could start crying or insist that Matt needs to help. And if that failed, they’d have 100 bucks handy.

NOTE: At this point in the story, it should be said that the author had another semi-humorous idea that would go here. He thought of it in the middle of the night and never wrote it down. So just imagine a really good joke here.

FOLLOW UP: The author remembered what he wanted to write. It was “Kid Is a mutant that can climb.” That doesn’t make sense and he’s glad it didn’t officially make the story.

March 16 rolled around.

Everyone woke up on time, the Uber driver arrived promptly and the family was at JFK with 90 minutes to spare.

Sure, there were a few hiccups. First, Matt didn’t know which side was “handle up” when weighing his checked bag; then, a gate agent told them they didn’t have to worry about printing boarding passes which meant they had to do a lot of phone scanning and finally, the person at TSA felt like lecturing them that morning.

Technically, they were at the airport employees’ place of work. It’s pretty easy to get annoyed when people come to your space and don’t do things just how you like them. 

Matt wasn’t thinking about all that when the family sauntered up to the gate from the moving walkway5. He had one job. Matt had to ask if they could pre-board. 

“We’ll bump you up to group five,” the harried American Airlines desk jockey smiled.

Didn’t sound bad. Matt went back to report to Anna. 

She said she could do better and handed the baby over. 

Two minutes later, Anna returned. “We’re pre-boarding,” she reported.

“How’d you do that,” Matt said while picking up the bags to haul onboard.

“Just tell them you have a car seat,” she explained while strapping baby Zelda into her carrier.

To the back of the plane they went to their mess of seats. Once they arrived, Anna set up the car seat at the window — facing forward as every flight attendant reminded them.

Matt bounced baby Zelda on his lap while Anna futzed with the buckle. Then, it was the waiting game. Each person that boarded could be the one that booked the aisle seat they needed.

Matt had a speech at the ready that had the word “poop” in it three times.

Finally, it happened. A middle-aged lady approached. She was the one. They prepared for this moment for weeks.

“You have a baby? I’ll move,” she said.

All that for nothing. You just read so much for the biggest anti-climax ever. Sorry.

Anna pointed to Matt’s aisle seat where she’d be sitting and the kind lady settled in.

Somehow, Zelda fell asleep. To pass the time, Anna queued up My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3; Matt selected Ferrari6. They’d be watching on their phones since American Airlines was too cheap to have those little TVs on the back of the seats.

Just as the plane was about to take off, an overly tan 50-something woman rushed to the back with her five-year-old daughter and curly haired, crying infant.

“I need someone to move now” she announced with the authority of a government official.

Apparently, she booked two middle seats in consecutive rows. 

Clearly, she didn’t role play this situation ahead of time. She was raw dogging the moment.

Matt and Anna watched their nightmare play itself out.

No one budged. Switching to a middle for a cross-country flight is beyond charity; it’s an act of sainthood. 

“Let’s move people, chop chop,” she — let’s call her Carolina — barked. 

A man got up. He sighed and made sure to make the move as begrudging as possible. Good for him.

“Gee thanks, took you long enough,” she said a little louder than one might expect for an act of gratitude. There was even a hint of sarcasm.

Once she settled in, Carolina needed her overhead bags stowed. The only problem was there was no room at this point. All the spaces were taken7.

“Then let’s make room, chop chop!” Carolina demanded. She really was going hard with the chop chops.

Flight attendants sighed under their masks as they rearranged the tightly packed spaces designed to fit as few compact suitcases as possible.

Finally, Carolina’s bags were in their right place.

Of course, her baby began to wail. Of course.

Zelda watched curiously.

“Baby,” Zelda said.

The plane took off and the crying didn’t get much better until Carolina set the little one down.

Yes, she was going to let a toddler walk up and down the aisles for the duration of the flight- even during turbulence. This was nuts.

Matt looked back to see what Carolina was doing while her baby — who had likely learned to walk in the past three months — wandered freely.

Carolina had one headphone in. Her five-year-old had the other. They were watching Barbie together. This would be a sweet moment if she was traveling with just one daughter. 

Meanwhile, the infant she wasn’t watching was going up and down the aisle giggling and tripping, giggling and tripping.

At noon, they landed. Nothing bad happened. It was mostly just annoying.

As Matt and Anna stood up when the “everybody rush to grab your stuff” light went on, Carolina tapped Matt’s shoulder.

“Your daughter is beautiful,” she offered.

“Thank you so much,” Matt said. He went down to pick up blueberries Zelda had dropped under the seat mid-flight.

“You don’t think you could…” she trailed off.

Matt looked at her with an eyebrow. Carolina was going to have to spit this one out herself. 

“Carry my bags off the plane?”

Matt mulled it over.

“My daughter just pooped and my wife has poop on her hands. I’d love to help but, you know. Poop.” 

Caroline nodded. Matt was stoked, though.

He finally got to use his speech.

Gotta hand it to you, you were a good year for laughs at the cineplex (and Roku Cities).

Case in point: it’s very possible that five of the ten Best Picture nominees in 2024 have comedic elements. Respected auteurs dropped funny, stylish, daring films. R-rated raunchfests made a comeback. Hell, many franchises (probably too many) got sequels and/or reboots.

Plus, the world was gifted Beau Is Afraid. I love that movie.

Overall, there were 196 (!) feature films with “comedy” listed as one of their genres that had some form of theatrical, streaming or online release in the US or internationally over the past 12 months (based on my findings).

In 2022, I counted only 124 feature-length funny flicks.

To be fair, I was way more diligent with my research this time around knowing I’d be making a list and found so, so, so many DIY, micro-budget indies — in fact, some were made years and years ago but didn’t see the light of day until 2023 — that I didn’t even think to track down last January.

What were the takeaways from my research?

Well, to state the obvious, Barbie certainly proved that a capital C, laugh out loud, funny comedy with heart and a message can still drive audiences to theaters in droves. Sure, it doesn’t hurt that Greta Gerwig’s sharp satire’s boffo box office bona fides was packaged as a theatergoing cultural event alongside Oppenheimer. Yet, as a film, GreGer (what I call Greta Gerwig) created something truly special. I’d call this the rare four-quadrant crowd pleaser/accessible for all ages/critical darling/smash hit home run picture. Movies like this are few and far between in a post-streaming world so we need to savor them when we can.

(Full disclosure: I watched Barbie on a plane, heh heh).

Another major lesson I gathered from 2023 was that the trend where comedies are Trojan-horsed into theaters as hybrid films, marched on. I’m talking about your Christmas coms (seven), horror coms (there were 11 by my estimation) and rom coms (a whopping 18), among many, many other crowded subgenres. In fact, my list is made up of 40 different categories.

The way I see it, people want to laugh but crave traditional storytelling, too.

As for box office receipts, while Barbie was an indisputable runaway success story (as were pseudo comedy hybrids like Super Mario Bros., Spider-Man Across The Spiderverse and Guardians of the Galaxy), comedies aren’t really a sure thing financially. They haven’t been for years. Truth be told, no movie is. From my perspective, the best way to look at comedy filmmaking (and all creative pursuits) is this — it’s nice that people are still putting their hearts and souls into making new works. Even if there’s no promise of monetary gain, folks are plugging away for the love of the game. And I respect that.

So, with all that being said, I’d like to pay my respect to all the writers, directors, actors, editors and crew members — yes, even the team behind PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie.

What you’ll find below is all 196 comedy movies released in 2023 separated into subcategories so you can pick and choose the genres within the genre you like.

I hope you discover something you love, fellow comedy film nerds. 

I know I did.

Note: my favorite movie of the year, the endlessly inventive 40-minute The Wonderful Life of Henry Sugar directed by Wes Anderson isn’t on the list because it wasn’t a feature.

Note pt. 2: Quite a few of these films could (and should) be featured under a handful of subcategories listed below. To keep things simple, I made sure not to double up on movies’ labels (for example, Murder Mystery 2 is a sequel AND a whodunnit but only listed as a sequel) so this list didn’t get too messy.

Note pt. 3: I haven’t seen all these movies (yet). If they’ve been miscategorized, please feel free to let me know. 

Also, if I missed a flick, fill me in. I’m always on the lookout for more stuff.

Likely Oscar contenders

Barbie

May December

The Holdovers

American Fiction

Poor Things

Prestige-y, artsy “indie” comedy

Blackberry

Asteroid City

Dad and Step Dad

The Adults

They Cloned Tyrone

Rye Lane

The rise of smart Gen Z comedy

Theater Camp

Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain

Bottoms

Joy Ride

The Sweet East

Ambitious A24 comedies

Dicks: The Musical

You Hurt My Feelings

Beau Is Afraid

Dream Scenario

When You Finish Saving The World

Showing Up

R-rated raunchy comedy

No Hard Feelings

Cocaine Bear

Dumb Money

Strays

Anyone But You

Mafia Mamma

Back On The Strip

The Re-education of Molly Singer

Totally cool animated superhero pictures with laughs

Spider Man: Across The Universe

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

Nimona

Under the radar bangers that don’t really fit in anywhere else

I Like Movies

Sick Girl

Polite Society

Go West

The Persian Version

What Doesn’t Float

Big-time stand ups taking a stab at writing and directing

Somewhere In Queens (dir. Ray Romano)

Old Dads (dir. Bill Burr)

About My Father (dir. Sebastian Maniscalco)

The Machine (dir. Bert Kreischer)

Road Dog (dir. Doug Stanhope)

Sitcom and film stars taking a stab at writing and directing

Fool’s Paradise (dir. Charlie Day)

Shortcomings (dir. Randall Park)

Good Grief (dir. Dan Levy)

What Happens Later (dir. Meg Ryan)

Action comedy with unlikely heroes

Dungeons and Dragons

Wingwomen

The Retirement Plan

Head to Head

Sports comedy

Air

Next Goal Wins

Champions

Chang Can Dunk

The last gasp of funny superhero movies (maybe)

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Shazam Fury of the Gods

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Mid comedies that landed on streamers but likely would have done decent business theatrically 10 years ago

The Beanie Bubble

Shotgun Wedding

Flamin’ Hot

Genie

Maggie Moore(s)

Miguel Wants To Fight

Quasi

You People

Quiz Lady

The Out-Laws

Ghosted

The Drop

Corner Office

Freelance

Smart, solid flicks for tweens that have long titles

Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret

You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah

Landscape with Invisible Hand

Documentaries about famous comics

Defending My Life

Headliners Only

Jackie Martling: Joke Man

Clever, inventive documentaries

Pinball: The Man Who Saved The Game

My Friend Tommy

Gentle on scares horror comedy

The Blackening

MEGAN

Totally Killer

Bad CGI Gator

The Kill Room

Don’t Suck

It’s A Wonderful Knife

We Have A Ghost

Renfield

Helen’s Dead

Project Z

Rom coms

Your Place Or Mine

Somebody I Used To Know

Fallen Leaves

Red White And Royal Blue

Beautiful Disaster

The List

Choose Love

Hashtag Proposal

Love Virtually

Chick Flick

Prom Pact

Puppy Love

The Other Zoey

Asian Persuasion

The Marry Me Pact

Match Me If You Can

Maybe I Do

Zoe’s Having A Baby

Queasy thrillers with comedic elements

Saltburn

Cat Person

Give Me Pity

Rotting In The Sun

Down Low

Sci-Fi yuks

Share?

Biosphere

Relax, I’m From The Future

The Pod Generation

Jules

Robots

Wacked out, balls to the wall crazy comedy

Adventures of the Naked Umbrella

Showdown at the Grand

Sequels and reboots

Chicken Run 2

Murder Mystery 2

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3

Scream VI

Wonka

Mr. Monk’s Last Case

House Party

Good Burger 2

Book Club: The Next Chapter

Vacation Friends 2

White Men Can’t Jump

Haunted Mansion

Buddy Games: Spring Awakening

For the kiddies

The Super Mario Bros Movie

Elemental

Leo

Under The Boardwalk

Trolls

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Christmas: Cabin Fever

Paw Patrol: Unleash The Powers

Feel good Christmas pictures

Candy Cane Lane

How The Gringo Stole Christmas

Merry Little Batman

The Naughty Nine

Christmas with Jerks

Best Christmas Ever

Merry Good Enough

Underseen ensemble pictures featuring familiar character actors

Maximum Truth (featuring Ike Barinhotlz, Mark Proksch, Kiernan Shipka, Dylan O’Brien)

She Came To Me (featuring Peter Dinklage, Anne Hathaway, Nicole Kidman, Marisa Tomei)

The Donor Party (featuring Malin Akerman, Erinn Hayes, Rob Corddry, Jerry O’Connell)

Linoleum (featuring Jim Gaffigan, Rhea Seehorn, Tony Shalhoub, Michael Ian Black) 

Fourth Grade (featuring Mena Suvari, William Baldwin, Teri Polo)

The Plus One (featuring Ashanti, Cedric The Entertainer)

Dramedies that are pretty close to dramas but their synopses say otherwise 

Wildflower

Relative

Sitting In Bars With Cake

Flora and Son

Stylish, smart quirkfests

Amanda

The Year Between

Little Jar

Throwback to a different time period pix

Stony Island

Millennium Bugs

Family comedies with the world “Family” in the title

The Family Plan

The Family Switch

For the older crowd

iMordecai

My Happy Ending

80 For Brady

Moving On

Two Tickets to Greece 

Daughter of the Bride

Pandemic period pieces

Who Invited Charlie

Life Upside Down

Intimate character study

Paint

Better Days

Based on a true story

Bank Of Dave

Radical

Adopting a baby story

Unexpected 

Boisterous whodunnits

The Sixth Reel

Hayseed

Movies about stand-up

That’s Funny

Camp comedy that takes place at camp

Camp Hideout

Shaggy dog comedies

Dogleg

Vegan propaganda disguised as a comedy film

Coffee Wars

Time travel

One More Time

Still here? I knew it. I always stay for the end of the credits, too.

Anyway, If you’ve stuck around this long, I wanted to let you know that the best part of this list is that each and every one of these movies has a trailer available to watch on YouTube. 

If you’re curious about any of these flicks, you can get a taste right now. 

OK, that’s everything. Keep it real, cinephiles.

First, the big ones. Sundance, TIFF, Cannes, because why not? A boy’s gotta dream!

Then, the more realistic, local showcases for aspiring amateurs. Basically, anything with New York/New Jersey/Long Island in its name so I wouldn’t have to rent a car or book a flight. A boy’s gotta budget!

After sending my $40 (often with “insurance” in case the festival was “cancelled”) and a Vimeo link to these tastemakers, I waited. The notification dates were often months away.

Most of the time, I forgot my movie even existed.

Then, the first rejection came and I very quickly became self-righteous about the film I had barely remembered just days before .

Immediately, I DM’d the festival curator via Instagram since they’re sort of a mini-celebrity in the short film community and I wanted to start a polite dialogue and show I’m a cool dude. 

Here’s what I wrote:

“Hey! Saw my short wasn’t selected for ______. No hard feelings but would you mind sharing some notes? I worked for two years on the movie and would love some feedback from pros I admire.”

They didn’t write back.

However, the message was marked as “read.”

Something must have been wrong. I sent a follow-up clarifying which short was mine.

No response.

This was more than a bit upsetting. I dropped $35 to apply (a steal of a price for the film fest racket) and their team doesn’t even have the decency to tell me why I was rejected? My blood was boiling.

Another rejection came in a few days later. 

Now I’m 0 for 2 batting .000.

Maybe my film was no good? If so, this was a harsher truth than radio silence. 

Do I suck? I must suck.

I sent a message to their team asking for notes.

These folks replied and wrote back:

“Hi Matt. We score on a scale of 1-5, it scored a 3.75. The selected films all scored 4 and up. Some of the comments are that it played a little long for a couple of the screeners’ taste, (though) they liked the actors. Hope that helps. I'm sure it will find many festival homes.”

OK! Now we’re getting somewhere.

Soon after, I fired up Adobe Premiere and began editing a project labeled “Final Final.”

This person was right. Fat could be trimmed.  My movie slimmed down from loose 19 to a tight 15 minutes.

Three months later, my first film fest acceptance popped in my inbox. 

Wow. Validation. My first thought was “is this one of the legit fests?”

THE FEST MEET AND GREET

On Thursday, Aug. 3, Anna and I attended the Chain Film Festival’s meet and greet.

It was packed. Wall to wall filmmakers with badges hobnobbing. This was what I moved to New York for. Not only did I want to be among filmmakers, I wanted to belong with them and, for one night, I did.

There was only one problem. The room was so loud, it was nearly impossible to network. Groups had already formed and I didn’t want to muscle my way into a conversation.

Anna and I stood on the outskirts, observing.

At moments like this, I wish I was better at rubbing shoulders and jumping into groups but the last thing anybody wants to hear while chatting is “what are you guys talking about?”

So, rather than putting myself out there and risking being annoying, Anna and I made small talk with a few other outsiders who were also too timid to jump into a group. These people were nice but I felt I didn’t really connect with any strangers there.

Walking home, back to our baby with her sitter, I felt like a failure.

“You got into the festival,” Anna said.

That’s true.

That’s really true.

Time to get over myself. 

This was what I wanted and I needed to stop moping and enjoy the moment.

THE SCREENING

The following Thursday, I headed back to midtown for the screening of my short in the Chain Film Festival’s fantasy block.

For a minute, it seemed like only my lead actor (the incomparable Manny Simmons) and I would be the only people watching the movie on the big screen.

Makes sense. It was rainy as hell that day. I almost didn’t want to go.

Thankfully, more folks showed up at the last second. My pals Blair Johnson and Belton Delaine-Facey popped in. Dianna Fuller, a fantastic actress who played the mom in my short, dropped in with her cousin right at 7.

Lights dimmed.

Finally, time to see the flick on the big screen. Cinema!

Well, after awhile.

There were six shorts in my block and mine was last.

When it finally came on, I felt a sense of relief. I’d been holding in pee for so long. Couldn’t wait to go.

As for the movie, it was fascinating to see with an audience. While it was an incredibly special experience, all I could see were the mistakes I made. Coverage I didn’t get, cringeworthy editing decisions, unnecessary sound cues.

Anything that didn’t feel real, fell very, very flat by my estimation.

Subtlety isn’t something a lot of short films traffic in and I’m certainly guilty of in-your-face choices.

Simplicity and quiet should be rewarded. This is really hard to understand if you haven’t seen your motion picture in a theater with a crowd.

Now that I’m on my soapbox, I’m gonna keep ranting. Here’s an important note for all short filmmakers:

Keep your credits tight. All the shorts screen back to back and no one wants to sit through a minute of names.

I learned this the hard way. 

Basically, watch your movie on a big screen before seeing it with an audience.  You’ll catch so many small things you’d never have noticed on a laptop.

/end rant

After the screenings, a moderator called the directors onstage for a talkback. 

“Was this your first movie,” he asked when he got to me.

“No,” I said, “although it may have looked like it.”

Big laugh.

Maybe too big.

AFTERMATH

At home, I stayed up all night playing the movie over and over in my head.

I couldn’t wait until the weekend when I could chop the movie up. There are still four festivals I’m waiting to hear back from (Sundance, if you’re reading this, I’m talking about you) and I want to send them the best possible product.

Dropped three more minutes from the movie. The short is even shorter, now just a tick over 12 minutes. Everything that wasn’t essential to the story is gone.

Either way, I’m grateful it happened. All fests have applicants that don’t get in and I should be happy that even if my movie wasn’t perfect, it was accepted.

So…

what happens next?

Well, hopefully, I get into a few more fests and don’t send any more embarrassing DMs.

Truth be told, I’m still not above it. It could def happen

PS: I’m already working on my next short. If you want to be a part of it in any capacity — you could join the crew, read the screenplay or we could just chat about movies — hit me up.

Movies!

That’s on me. Being a dad (hey, it’s Father’s Day, what a coincidence) is a time-consuming, exhilarating, rewarding full-time gig that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. Today, my daughter drank a smoothie for the first time. Didn’t know that would be such an exciting milestone that I’d be telling the world about but dadhood has changed me.

As a result, spending my free time writing about what movies and TV shows I’d seen over the previous week when I could be spending time with family felt selfish and honestly, downright silly.

So, I put it off.

But now I’m back for a tiny bit of self-promotion.

Couldn’t help myself  — I’m a recovering narcissist.

Plus, this 30-second teaser trailer for my short film “Dungeons” starring Manny Simmons and Mecca McDonald is too dang good not to share with you in the off-chance you missed it.

Enjoy.

Pretty great, right?

And that button at the end? Priceless, am I right? Well, guess what? It was totally improvised.

These actors rule and I can’t wait to share the whole movie with you all someday soon.

That’s all for me.

I’m going to drink the rest of the smoothie that my daughter didn’t finish

It didn’t feel right at the time to share my story since it was such a wild and scary experience so I’ve been sitting on this emergency room yarn for a year just so I wouldn’t worry friends and family.

Anyhow, now that 13 months have passed, it feels right to finally tell you all what happened on February 28 through March 1 of last year.

Note: This was written on March 6, 2022.

• I tested positive for COVID this week.

For a bit of context, New York City had just lifted the mask mandates and every news publication couldn’t stop writing about how cases were going down.

A good lesson should be learned here — maybe don’t trust mass media.

Still, I’m not here to complain; I’m the one at fault here. 

All that being said, I’d like to share my experience for folks who are yet to get down with the sickness.

On Monday morning (Feb. 28, 2022), we took at-home tests. After having taken dozens of tests, it came back positive for the first time ever.

I thought it was a mistake.

We walked to City MD and they confirmed those tests were correct. The COVID was coming from inside the body and there was nothing I could do about it.

This was especially upsetting to us because we’d be so meticulous over the past two years. I’d often been the annoying “only-masker” at social gatherings and scoffed when others didn’t wear masks.

Well, I’ve completely lost that privilege.

Immediately after receiving the positive diagnosis, I wanted to play detective and find out, “Where did I get this from?”

I contacted everyone I’d been in touch with that week to see if they a) were OK and b) make sure they’d get tested if they hadn’t been recently.

No one else tested positive to the best of my knowledge. The mystery lives on (Note: And still does to this day).

Anna and I made plans to self-quarantine at home, catch up on movies and make the best out of a crummy situation. That is, until things got quite a bit more dramatic out of nowhere.

Around 2 a.m. on Monday night, I woke up after having been asleep for a few hours to go to the bathroom. This is a fairly common occurrence for me.

Anyhow, this time around, my legs felt like jelly as soon as I stood. Woozily, I walked to the bathroom and had the fleeting thought, “I should sit down.”

Next thing I know, I’m on the bathroom floor face first.

I have no recollection of falling and hitting the sink or toilet seat — it just happened.

This wasn’t my first time passing out either. In fact, it’s my fourth in the past six years.

When I fainted this time, I crashed so hard into my bathroom stand that I woke up Anna who was fast asleep. She raced to my aid and helped get me gather my senses.

Allegedly, I stood on my own and walked back to the bedroom without ever having even gone to the bathroom which was the whole point of the walk.

Then, I fell a second time.

Anna was freaking out. She didn’t want me to go back to bed because terrible things can happen to people if they do after hitting their head.

Since I’d fallen so many times before, I assured her I was fine and called it a night.

Not my wisest moment.

The next day, I went to work (again, not my wisest moment) and when my WFH shift ended, we walked to City MD for the second consecutive day.

This time around, the doctor advised me to go to the E.R. immediately or else I could potentially have a “Natasha Richardson situation” where a slow bleed could potentially kill me in five days.

City MD really needs to work on their bedside manner.

Soon after, we’re at the Mount Sinai Astoria Emergency Room. Many doctors scolded me for not coming in earlier like Anna advised. Lesson learned.

I’m feeling fine this entire time but I’m waiting on pins and needles to hear back from the doctors to hear the results of my CT scan because head trauma victims often feel fine and don’t experience any pain.

At 2 a.m. (24 hours after the initial fall), our doctor comes in and says, “You’re fine.” 

It was a rush. Made me forget I had COVID and a concussion for a second.

After that, the rest of the week was much more low-key. Symptoms like taste, smell, chest pains, came and went. Honestly, the most upsetting experience was doing a basic High Intensity Interval Training workout and it was much harder on my lungs and stamina than ever before. 

Hopefully, that doesn’t last (Note: It kinda does).

I’m certainly thankful I had Anna by my side for the whole experience (Note: I still am).

COVID, I give you 0/5 stars, would not recommend (Note: I stand by this).

Postscript: In the year since, I’ve come to realize that the fall was probably likely due to dehydration in addition to the illness. 

What’s the point of all this?

Just a friendly reminder to stay safe and hydrated.

Plus, it’s too wild a story just to let sit in my Google Docs forever.

That being said, this anecdote did bomb horrifically when I shared it at a storytelling open mic last year so there is that.

OK, that’s all.

Sadly, we don’t live in a perfect world.

However, if you’re looking for a template on how to gracefully wade into your octogenarian years, look no further than Judd Hirsch’s portrayal of Mordecai in Marvin Samel’s delightful feature film debut, iMordecai.

The 100-minute slice-of-life light comedy tells the story of immigrant Holocaust survivor, painter/plumber, investor, husband, father and new iPhone user Mordecai. He lives in Florida with his declining wife, Fela (Carol Kane, reuniting with her Taxi co-star) close to their businessman son, Marvin (Sean Astin), his wife (Stephanie J. Block) and their twin children while navigating 2020s America. 

As Mordecai struggles to get used to modern tech - he pecks away at a smartphone without much luck until he’s helped by tech gurus - we learn that he has as much to teach the younger generation as they do for him. 

Samel, a first-time director, based the characters on his own family, and his loving portrayal of their wisdom and foibles demonstrates an even-handed interpretation of the real Mr. and Mrs. Samel. Are they the root of intergenerational trauma? Yes. Are they also the source of his privilege? Absolutely.

Since Samel attempts to cram every story in from his life using Hirsch, Kane and Astin as surrogates, the film can seem overstuffed at times. Plot lines centering around business deals gone wrong, dementia, art exhibits, a failed comedy show and a misunderstanding about Nazi lineage give the movie a herky-jerky pace but as it progressed, its rich tapestry began to make sense- the film is merely trying to demonstrate the messiness of life. Many things are going on in our busy days, the same is true of iMordecai.

Think of it this way- the movie is like a call with your grandfather. A lot is said and by the end you’re smiling.

Final verdict: Hirsch and Kane disappear into their roles as Eastern European immigrants; Sean Astin does career-best work as put-upon son and iMordecai finds the balance between light and dark. 

If this is what getting old is like, sign me up. 

I love seeing what pops up on critics’ lists and friends’ lists and where the two overlap. Pretty much everyone agreed on Everything Everywhere All At Once (who can dislike that instant classic?) and Barbarian but many were divided on biggies like Top Gun: Maverick and Elvis. 

However, what I find most interesting is the oddities that appear on folks’ lists — that’s where they get their personality. It’s almost like a flex. “Oh, you loved George Clooney and Julia Roberts in Ticket To Paradise?” Suddenly, your list got interesting. I’m interested in what you have to say. Clearly, you didn’t copy-paste critics’ lists and sought out flicks that matched your taste rather than what everyone everywhere all at once claimed was great (heh heh, that’s a lil joke).

All that being said, I’d like to present my top 11 movies of the year (this may change quite a bit in a few months since there’s still so much to see):

11.) Bob’s Burgers: The Movie dir. Loren Bouchard, Bernard Derriman

10.) I Love My Dad dir. James Morosini

9.) Vengeance dir. BJ Novak

8.) The Lost City dir. Aaron and Adam Nee

7.) Glass Onion dir. Rian Johnson

6.) Spirited dir. Sean Anders 

5.) Funny Pages dir. Owen Kline

4.) Everything Everywhere All At Once dir. The Daniels (putting it here to be interesting)

3.) Chip N Dale: Rescue Rangers dir. Akiva Schaeffer

2.) Barbarian dir. Zach Cregger

1.) Marcel the Shell with Shoes On dir. Dean Fleischer Camp

As you may have noticed, all of these movies are comedies or comedy-adjacent.

In a time where the future of film appears to be bleak (heck, with the advent of ChatGPT, writing appears to be on the way out too; just today, Anna told me there was AI to help with resumes too for cryin’ out loud), and comedies have long since been considered almost guaranteed box office , quite a few films that can be classified as comedies were miraculously released in 2022.

And me, being the nerd I am, I compiled a big ol’ list of all the comedy films that hit theaters and streamers over the past year categorized by sub-genres to show a) the genre is alive and well (for now) and b) everything you may have missed and may want to check out (it’s also very possible you saw all of this on Twitter. If you did, it’s the same stuff!).

Enjoy!

Buzzy indie

Funny Pages

I Love My Dad

Cha Cha Real Smooth

Sharp Stick

Not Okay

On The Count of Three

Windfall

Emergency

Absurd and artsy with long titles  

Everything Everywhere All At Once 

Triangle of Sadness 

Marcel The Shell with Shoes on 

Three Thousand Years of Longing 

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths 

The Sky Is Everywhere

Self-Aware Reboots

Confess, Fletch

Chip N Dale: Rescue Rangers

Father of the Bride

The Munsters

Scream

Cheaper By The Dozen

Showbiz parodies

The Bubble

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent

The Valet

Smart high school comedies

Senior Year

Honor Society

Do Revenge

Hello, Goodbye, And Everything In Between

Moonshot

Better Nate Than Ever

Darby and the Dead

Metal Lords

Crush

Sneakerella

Anything’s Possible

Rosaline

Murder mystery satires

Glass Onion

Vengeance

The Menu

See How They Run

Chilling yet funny horror films

Nope

Barbarian

Bodies Bodies Bodies

Fresh

The Curse of Bridge Hollow (this isn't chilling but I threw it in as a courtesy)

Romcoms

Bros

Marry Me

Ticket To Paradise

The Lost City

Meet Cute

I Want You Back

Spin Me Round

Fire Island

The People We Hate At The Wedding

Spoiler Alert

7 Days

Adult animated show jumps to features

Bob’s Burger Movie

Beavis and Butthead

South Park The Streaming Wars

South Park The Streaming Wars 2

Inspirational sports dramedies

Hustle

Home Team

1Up

Celebrity vanity projects

Good Mourning

Easter Sunday

Studio 666

Comedic sci-fi

The Adam Project

Dual

Something In The Dirt

BigBug

Oscar fare with comedic elements

Armageddon Time

White Noise

Babylon

Amsterdam

(Haven't seen any of these but reviews seem to hint at these movies being funnyish- feel free to roast me for this one)

Historical nostalgia

Banshees of Inisherin

Cyrano

Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris

Sequels

Jackass Forever

Clerks III

A Madea Homecoming

Hocus Pocus 2

Disenchanted

Sonic The Hedgehog 2

Old school action comedies

Bullet Train

Day Shift

Secret Headquarters

Family Friendly animation

Lightyear

Turning Red

Strange World

Night At The Museum

Diary Of A Wimpy Kid

League Of Super Pets

Luck

Wendell and Wild

Marmaduke

Bad Guys

Minions

Puss In Boots

Paws Of Fury

Lyle Lyle Crocodile

Hotel Transylvania

Ice Age Adventure of Buck Wild

TMNT

Family friendly live action

Matilda The Musical

Catherine Called Birdy

Dog

Christmas

Spirited

A Christmas Story Christmas

Something From Tiffany's

The Noel Diary

Violent Night

Falling For Christmas

Middle of the road boomer feel good films

A Man Called Otto

Good Luck To You, Leo Grande

The Greatest Beer Run Ever

Mack and Rita

Jerry and Marge Go Large

The Good House

Sam and Kate

Didn't make much noise

The Estate

Honk For Jesus, Save Your Soul

Kevin Hart starrers

The Man From Toronto

Me Time

Religious

Family Camp

Documentary

Stutz

If you made it this far, tell me if I missed anything or what you liked this year. Or what you hated. Or what I mis-genre’d. Or if Tár is a satire. I haven’t seen it.

Also, happy new year too

• You ever watch a show or movie and a single image resonates with you so deeply, it plays on a loop in your mind?

For me, this happens all the time. I’ll completely forget the whole story and fixate on one moment moving the rest of whatever happened in the narrative to the back of my consciousness.

This happened most recently while watching a season six episode of “The Sopranos” (yeah, I know I should have seen it forever ago, people make mistakes). While the series is full of striking images and intoxicating snippets of dialogue (literally anytime Paulie Walnuts opens his mouth, gold comes out), I was completely taken with a pretty mundane mise en scene.

I’ll paint the picture.

Tony (aka THEE James Gandolfini if you’re new) has a rare moment alone at home and steps on a scale. He weighs 280. Doesn’t like that one bit. So, the next move is to take off the shoes. Doesn’t tip the scale. Now, Tony disrobes. Still 280.

This stuck with me for a number of reasons.

Last year, on Black Friday, after a pretty physically taxing day, I got down to a decent weight. Not a great weight (in fact, I was far from being in shape), but I felt good especially being in the middle of a pandemic, still using the gym sparingly and the fact it was the day after the annual food Super Bowl.

In the year since, I’ve really let myself go. 

Salty snacks, little desserts every night, skipping water for seltzers, huge portions and limited exercise led me to balloon up an additional 40 pounds (aka the double COVID-19) taking me to my highest weight ever aka the “fattest I’ve ever been.”

Spoiler: the number is kinda close to Tony’s when he stepped on the scale.

And let me tell you, you don’t wanna be near a notoriously large man’s weight. It feels dangerous like skating on thin ice but now you’re 40 pounds heavier and the ice is creaking.

Obviously, I rarely literally find myself on thin ice but in reality I can’t even use my step ladder since its weight limit is 225.

I gotta use that ladder for basic tasks too. Who else is gonna reach high up stuff? That’s my job as the family tall guy. 

Thing is, I don’t know if I can really get back on track (or the ladder for that matter). My body has gotten used to large portions. Like I need to split a bag of Trader Joe’s teriyaki chicken or my stomach goes into starvation mode. It’s weak- just like the stepladder.

That being said, I’m pretty good at two-day diets. Once I lose two pounds after two days though, I fall off the wagon. 

This has all been informally documented too. I mean check out these things I’ve tweeted recently:

“Chobani Flips taste really good except for the yogurt part”

“Help, I melted ice cream on top of my Cinnamon Toast Crunch and now I can’t go back to milk.”

I’m an eating machine in a bad way.

Not sure what I’m getting at here other than I wanted to let people know, yeah, I’m heavy at the moment. My clothes don’t fit as well (although a hoodie I’ve had since fourth grade still slides on, no prob). I’ve got a double chin in every photo and I make people retake every picture of me. Oh, and one thing people should know is the fatter you get, the harder it is to hide your double chin (unless you’re having an AI picture drawn of you, of course).

Plus, to add insult to injury, doctors praise my four-month-old daughter for putting on weight. They applaud when she gains two pounds. 12-pound babies don’t know how good they have it. 

There is a silver lining. I think I found my goal for this whiny essay that you’re still reading.

Hopefully, getting this message out into the world will make other people who inexplicably put on weight over the past year (without the pandemic excuse of the gyms being closed) feel a little less alone. 

And maybe folks will send healthy lunch and dinner recommendations to mix up my schedule. 

Right now, I’m doing way too much sodium-heavy ramen and chicken dinners. It’s my ultimate weakness. I’ve deluded myself into thinking chicken and rice is healthy. Nah. Would love to hear what’s worked for others to get out of a rut other than, ya know, the oft-advertised lifestyle change of diet and exercise because I’m aware they exist and I’m trying but it’s kinda tough when you have a four-month-old and you’re cooking for ease and comfort and you can’t stop snacking on pita chips and chocolate covered almonds.

Those are all excuses but, I have to say, having grown up with s lot of weight shame, it’s liberating to be so open about this here.

That’s all about that. 

Thanks to Tony S, the waste management consultant, for bravely getting on that scale on tv. It helped me open up.

• Now, for a tiny bit of comedy-related material:

- Having become a dad recently has made it hard to do much in the way of comedy which means not only have I gotten flabby, my funny bone has too.

The only time I really have to myself to write or edit or do anything creative is if I force myself to wake up at 5 or so before my daughter. Maybe sometimes at night too but those opportunities are few and far between.

Anyway, I recently finished a few things.

- First up, a TikTok vid Anna filmed of me back in May 2021. For almost a year, I’ve had cutting it on my to-do list but never got around to it. And although there are no “cuts” in the video (it’s all one take), editing was a headache trying to figure out the joke.

The short originally started with a bit where a Southerner told me to “go back to New York” but I didn’t want to put words in Bojangles’ mouth (the video takes place at a Bojangles drive-thru). Then, I tried the lame Mike Myers “dummy says what” bit. That felt too tired. I needed something actually funny.

Finally, with the help of a few friends and voice work from the talented Daniel J. Perafan, I found a happy medium.

Hope you enjoy this 45 second thing. It still makes me laugh and I’ve seen it like 45 times.

- Secondly, I wrote my second pilot of the year. “Feedback” is a robust 39-page story about my weekly writer’s group (yes, I complained I don’t get to do enough creative stuff but I am in a weekly writer’s group. I’m a monster). Using the members of the group as inspiration, I finally wrote the “Princess Bride” style script I’ve had rattling in my brain forever.

On Sunday, I held a reading of the pilot and while there are some kinks to iron out (too long, reads like a writer wrote the words instead of people talking), it had moments! Moments! That’s all I can hope for with anything I write.

Major thanks to the cast Anna, Dan, Dan, Ahri, Jourdain, Joey and Susan for reading and Jake and Chris for showing up.

• And, finally some light recommendations:

- Make sure to check out Deanna Director’s hilarious 50-second “Nike Feels.” In this sharp, parody, runners address the camera and tell us “what they’re running from” with answers as varied as “myself” to “basic math.” Come for the jokes, stay for the impressive style- this thing looks and feels just like a Nike commercial which is no easy feat- they have the most stylish, kinetic ads in the game. Enjoy.

- Shows normally don’t get better after a pilot. While they’re a tough act to pull off (introducing characters and the world while being funny and compelling is no easy balancing act), they’re usually indicative of what’s to come.

That’s why I was so pleasantly surprised with Amy Schumer’s “Life and Beth.”

The pilot was atrocious. Not funny, tonally mixed, dour and claustrophobic.

Shut it off, vowing not to return.

However, I came back a month or so later and caught episode two. What a marked improvement. 

Glad I stayed for the rest. This show is hysterical, heartfelt and not at all like its first episode. Slog through the initial half hour for exposition and you’ll be rewarded for your hard work, my friends.

- Finally, RIP Carolines.

The club gave me my first and only real opportunity in the comedy industry and for that, I am forever grateful. That’s the one club that asked me to be a member and I was overjoyed.

That’s it for this grab bag of complaints, brags and thoughts.

As a wise man once said, keep it sleazy

1.) Seeing Daft Punk live (I love those robot fellas). 

2.) Getting a drink with Lorne Michaels (even if he sometimes/often gives a platform to morally questionable performers).

3.) Hearing Quentin Tarantino speak in person (even if he is a morally questionable human).

Well, on Wednesday, Nov. 16, bucket list dream number three came true for me when 59-year-old QT spoke at NYC’s Town Hall and I was there.

Like any good Tarantino movie though, let’s get a little non-linear and go back to the very beginning of this saga now (starting at the beginning barely counts as Tarantino-esque if I’m being honest with myself).

PROLOGUE

So, this mini, four-stop book tour exists purely to promote Tarantino’s new half-film criticism slash half-memoir “Cinema Speculation.”

The event was billed as “a Q&A with a top local critic” followed by a reading of a chapter by old Quentin himself.

I couldn’t miss this.

My life philosophy when it comes to going to things is always, “How would future Matt feel if he didn’t go?”

Usually, I can rationalize away the need to do stuff using this logic puzzle.

Not for this one.

As soon as the announcement dropped, I made plans right away.

However, being a new dad put a wrinkle into the mix. You can’t just leave wife and baby alone for a night. I mean, you could but you shouldn’t. 

So, I had to get crafty. 

We’d need a friend to stay by Anna’s side that Wednesday (which was a month away at this point). To solve the problem, we quickly enlisted Anna’s friend Alexis to come over Nov. 16 with the promise of a pizza dinner. It’d be less like babysitting and more like a paid hang sesh.

With that settled, I hit up my old cinema lovin’ pal Nate Borgman to see if he wanted to see the director of “Kill Bill” yammer onstage.

Dude was down.

I quickly forked over $90/ticket after fees and giddily counted down the days to see one of my all-time favorite directors speak. This was my one time out of the house and I couldn’t wait to hear him do his thing off the cuff.

In fact, I fanboy’d so hard that I prepared Q&A questions and came up with one that I thought was pretty good. It went:

“Since you’re planning on only directing ten films, what are some of the movies you ALMOST made but didn’t since they weren’t worthy of your ten?”

Yes, you’re right. I really don’t get out enough.

CHAPTER I: Nov. 16

The fateful Wednesday finally rolled around and everything went according to plan. 

During the day, I watched “Reservoir Dogs” for the first time in years and was wowed by its crackerjack dialogue, impressive plot sequencing and smart use of a warehouse as a location for the film.

That being said, the casual racism and sexism really did not age well, especially considering some of these career criminals are coded as progressive in the famous opening scene where they explain the intricacies of tipping your server.

So it goes.

In the evening, Anna’s friend Alexis came over, we pizza’d, got heartburn (well, I did. Can’t speak for everyone else) and even shared tiny Trader Joe’s ice cream cones which I don’t like to give to anyone but this was a special occasion.

At 6:45, I dutifully headed to midtown to make sure I wasn’t late to the talk. 30 minutes later, I popped off the 7 train at Bryant Park and fell prey to the consumer paradise that is one of New York’s many Christmas markets. Almost broke down and bought a $10 whoopie pie. Those whoopie pies looked so damn good and I’m not even a whoopie pie guy.

After exercising the tiniest bit of restraint (I did have heartburn after all), I aimlessly wandered around fantasizing about eating at every single food station— jerk chicken, burgers, dumplings all looked great even though I’d already had a sizable dinner— and then checked my phone. 7:30. Time to walk to Town Hall.

CHAPTER II: Town Hall

When I arrived at 43rd Street, a swarm of mid-30s bros (my people!) were gathering on the side of the street outside the theater. Turns out Tarantino himself was there. I didn’t get much of a look but I imagine people were throwing “Pulp Fiction” merch in his face to sign. You know, the poster where Uma Thurman looks into the lens and it says ten cents in the corner. It’s cool. You like it. I like it.

Anyway, waving merch in someone’s face is not my scene so I went to meet Nate who was already in line for the show. His pal, Mike from Rhode Island, joined us.

We quickly advanced to the front of the line of dudes in hats/horn-rimmed glasses/hoodies, put our phones in Yondr pouches (we honestly all need these at home so we don’t aimlessly scroll all day) and entered. A staff member handed me a hardcover copy of “Cinema Speculation.” Immediately, I thumbed through the half film criticism/half memoir looking for juicy tidbits.

The three of us walked to our high up balcony seats with limited leg room and chatted. Then, we chatted some more. Mostly, I was thinking, “I’d love some more leg room.” These venues aren’t built for anyone over 5’2.

Ol’ Tarantino was taking his sweet time to head onstage. Many of the people surrounding our block of three seats had cracked open their books and started reading. It was a nice sight to behold but then, when you remember that the venue forced us to put our phones away, it checks out.

CHAPTER III: Tarantino speaks

Finally, Tarantino takes the stage with famed film critic and director Elvis Mitchell. Thunderous applause.

The two gentlemen take their seats (both have ample leg room) and I wondered, “Do they rehearse Q and A’s backstage?” Does the person who has to provide the “A’s” have any clue what the “Q’s” will be?

Just as I was finishing that thought, Mitchell asked a question about director Brian De Palma.

Oh. It was going to be one of those interviews.

Truth be told, I love Tarantino talking about movies as much as the next cinephile but that’s not quite worth $90 if I’m being honest.

Over the course of the next hour, Tarantino referenced obscure movies from his filmgoing heyday in the early ‘70s (“Joe,” “Where’s Poppa,” “The Bus Is Coming,” dozens more), how he loved rowdy crowds as a kid and self-congratulatory anecdotes about run-ins with Pauline Kael after having devoured her stuff at B Dalton as a teen.

I found myself yawning.

This was an event I’d been looking to forever. Even though I “knew” this was what the Q&A was going to be, something felt off. This wasn’t the live-wire Tarantino whose interviews always seemed special and spontaneous. At the very least, an anecdote or two about the movies he made rather than secondhand stories would do.

My yawn must have been heard because Tarantino finally told a “Jackie Brown” tale.

YES! 

Essentially, when Tarantino cast Robert Forster as Max Cherry in the film, he told him he wanted to revive the character Forster played in the 1980 film “Alligator,” except now he’s 17 years older.

CHAPTER IV: The Interruption

Halfway through this delightful trivia tidbit, a man started screaming obscenities at the stage. I can’t say for certain what was going on with him.

To ease the tension, Tarantino said, “Hey fella, calm down or we’re gonna have to bounce you out” or something to that effect.

Fairly innocuous response. For a guy that talked at length about how much he loved a “live theater experience” this was a wee bit hypocritical but it seemed as if his heart was in the right place as the yeller wasn’t “adding” to the experience. In any event, the old Tarantino would have definitely engaged more and had more fun with this live moment.

I digress.

A woman sitting near me in the balcony didn’t think his off-handed comment was quite as well-meaning.

She bellowed, “QUENTIN TARANTINO. That man might have a mental illness. Don’t talk to him like that.”

The crowd booed. Vibes had been harshed.

Honestly, I was on her side.

Tarantino could have been a bit more sensitive in this tense situation. Sure, she was a bit hard on him with her stern tone but maybe this man-child turned bravura director needed a talking to, to lively things up! We were getting somewhere! The night was finally electric.

He responded.

“If you don’t like me, why did you come?”

Cheers.

She said something to the effect of “I know my Second Amendment rights” (I hope she meant the First Amendment!) and was removed soon after.

Elvis Mitchell made a corny joke.

“Now, THIS is a Town Hall.”

More cheers.

I guess it was a “town hall” in that the dissenting dialogue was shut down right away.

At this point, Tarantino deflected and returned to his comfy Forster story but you know that thing where you avoid the elephant in the room and it’s all people can think about? This was definitely that.

To quash the weirdness in the room, Tarantino and Mitchell actually started getting into juicy movie gossip.

Tarantino humbly bragged that he refused to do a dialogue polish on “Shaft” because “dialogue is his well water” which he further explained saying, “he doesn’t just give that away.”

Elvis prodded more and Tarantino broke the news that he had written a play and an eight-episode miniseries (maybe tied to “Justified” my friend Charlton guessed), the latter of which will go into production next year.

When asked for details, Tarantino didn’t budge saying, “I’m a bummer! Sorry!”

Intermission.

Maybe in the second half, Tarantino would do a full-on Q&A and we’d get some of his storytelling magic.

Nah.

CHAPTER V: The reading of the book

When he returned, QT read the first chapter of his book aloud. Ironically, we’d all pretty much read this chapter at that point since we’d all had our phones taken away, thus, making this the most useless live audiobook experience I’d ever seen.

To make matters worse, Tarantino did problematic racist voices imitating people in the audience at blaxploitation films from his youth.

No joke, people got up and walked out. 

I would have too but I paid $90 to sit in the second to last row. There was no way I was leaving before they kicked us out.

QT wrapped up the first chapter. There was no audience Q&A. Just the conversation and reading and that was that.

He waved and strode offstage.

CHAPTER VI: The whole ride home

The whole ride home, all I could think was “Q and A’s suck. No one really prepares, the conversation is dull and it’s awkward for the audience to have to laugh extra hard at lame jokes almost as a favor to the people onstage.”

Finally, I got off the train. It was cold.

As I climbed down the stairs at my station, I noticed a couple. They also had the orange “Cinema Speculation” book.

“Were you guys at Town Hall tonight?”

Obviously.

I asked if they enjoyed the show. They did. “What did you think?” the wife asked.

CHAPTER VII: The airing of the grievances

Couldn’t help myself. I aired all my grievances to strangers complaining that the show wasn’t more about Tarantino, didn’t have an audience Q&A, how I had such high expectations but they weren’t even close to being met and the night didn’t feel meaningful.

The wife looked at me. 

“He was promoting his book,” she said.

She’s right.

Sometimes, you just have to accept things for what they are, not what you want them to be. The night was what it was.

Either way, fingers crossed that Daft Punk comes out of retirement and lives up to impossible expectations.