Comedies

Comedies

A selection of films sure to leave you laughing.

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Comedies
  • Beeswax

    Directed by Andrew Bujalski | 100 mins | 2009
    One of the acclaimed writer-director’s unsung gems is a casually nuanced portrait in contrasts between twenty-something twin sisters, Jeannie and Lauren, in Austin, Texas. While Jeannie (who’s paraplegic) keeps a steely eye on her vintage shop, Lauren...

  • Boyfriends and Girlfriends

    Directed by Éric Rohmer | 103 mins | 1987
    Rohmer uses the amorous misadventures of two girlfriends in the Paris suburbs to test the old proverb “les amis de mes amis sont mes amis” (“the friends of my friends are my friends”) in the final episode of his “Comedies and Proverbs” series. Taking an i...

  • Exit Elena

    Directed by Nathan Silver | 72 mins | 2012
    One of the great under-the-radar debuts, Silver’s sly comedy drops a twenty-something nursing aide (Kia Davis) into a suburban house where her kibitzing employer—played by the director’s scene-stealing mom—keeps drawing her into drama and chit chat. Show...

  • Hyenas

    Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty | 110 mins | 1992
    One of the treasures of contemporary cinema, Senegalese master Mambéty made his long-delayed follow-up to his canonical Touki Bouki with this hallucinatory comic adaptation of Swiss avant-garde writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play The Visit. In Mam...

  • La Chinoise

    Directed by Jean-Luc Godard | 96 mins | 1967
    Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto, and Anne Wiazemsky co-star in Godard’s rouge-tinted, slogan-splattered political comedy concerning five innocents passing their summer vacation in a shared apartment by discoursing on Mao, performing agitprop theater, a...

  • P. P. Rider

    Directed by Shinji Sômai | 118 mins | 1983
    Adapted from a story by Leonard Schrader—yes, Paul’s brother—"P.P. Rider" is a cheeky, playful, and consistently surprising adventure yarn about three young friends who, having witnessed the kidnapping of their school bully, set out on a journey across J...

  • The Aviator's Wife

    Directed by Éric Rohmer | 106 mins | 1981
    The inaugural film of Éric Rohmer’s “Comedies and Proverbs” cycle, The Aviator’s Wife is a fleecy farce of romantic overanalysis that finds the director exploring the possibilities of handheld camerawork in following a narrative expression of the opening ...

  • Claire's Camera

    Directed by Hong Sangsoo | 68 mins | 2017
    Isabelle Huppert re-teams with the Korean master for a light-footed comedy about a Polaroid-wielding schoolteacher visits Cannes and befriends a newly jobless woman (Kim Minhee). Their quick friendship sheds light on the meddlesome reasons for her firing,...

  • Viola

    Directed by Matías Piñeiro | 60 mins | 2012
    A group of actresses who are putting on all-female Shakespeare productions find that the theatrical swirl of frisky intrigue is blurring the boundaries between onstage and off. Filmed with a witty feel for the ongoing dance of social life, Piñeiro’s ele...

  • Rock 'n' Roll High School

    Directed by Allan Arkush and Joe Dante | 93 mins | 1979
    The moptop Ramones liberate a school from killjoy Principal Togar (Mary Woronov) in this sweetly rambunctious romp starring P.J. Soles (Halloween) as lead rebel of the student body. The innocent music-fueled anarchy (directed by a veteran of...

  • Two Plains & a Fancy

    Directed by Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn | 89 mins | 2018
    A dandy, a mystic, and a geologist adrift in the Colorado desert: here Kalman and Horn take what sounds like it could be a set-up for a joke and turn it into a wry and layered period piece. Urbanites set out for unfamiliar territory in sear...

  • Blondes in the Jungle

    Directed by Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn | 48 mins | 2009
    As much inspired by "Degrassi Junior High" (1987-1991) as Warhol’s "Lonely Cowboys" (1968), Kalman and Horn’s kaleidoscopic 1987-set first feature has the titular blondes, a trio of heedless teens, plunge into the Honduran jungle in search ...

  • The Stolen Man

    Directed by Matías Piñeiro | 92 mins | 2007
    Piñeiro’s delightful debut feature skips along with a coterie of Buenos Aires friends, galvanized by one devilishly playful woman with a penchant for games of love and chance. With New Wave brio, the film kicks off Piñeiro’s cycle of contagiously rhythm...

  • Dream Team

    Directed by Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn | 93 mins | 2024
    Making films together since 2004, Kalman and Horn have developed and refined a style that’s entirely their own, an idiosyncratic blend of ethereal synth-scored reverie, deadpan absurdist humor, sly sociopolitical observation, and genre-ben...

  • Spacked Out

    Directed by Lawrence Lau | 94 mins | 2000
    Set in the massive, crumbling urban developments in Hong Kong’s New Territories with a combination of trained actors and nonprofessionals, Spacked Out depicts a few tumultuous days in the lives of four schoolgirls, filled with desultory mall outings, clas...

  • L for Leisure

    Directed by Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn | 73 mins | 2014
    Only ’90s kids will remember: in this affectionate but ironic throwback, structured as a series of piquant, deadpan vignettes, grad students on vacation lounge and mull over matters both petty and metaphysical. Captured on sparkling 16mm, t...