10 – Bringing Up Baby

The oldest film on the list, Bringing Up Baby is classic slapstick, mile a minute comedy. It’s a story about a scatterbrained heiress who has a pet leopard named Baby, and a paleontologist who keeps on getting wrapped up into the misadventures and clumsiness that goes on. What really makes this film stand out, though, is the frenetic pace that it’s written. They generally say that a page of a screenplay is the same as about a minute of screen time. Bringing Up Baby has a 102 minute run time and a 200+ page script, so the dialog doesn’t stop, which is where so much of the humor comes form.

9 – The Fearless Vampire Killers

Also known as Pardon Me, Your Teeth Are In My Neck, The Fearless Vampire Killers walks that line between horror, of the time period, and comedy. It follows an inept group of vampire hunters who end up in a remote village in Transylvania. There, the dimwitted assistant falls in love with the beautiful daughter of the innkeeper. Unfortunately for them, the mysterious Count Krolock is also interested in her. I think that this one is a bit more of a deep cut for a lot of people in terms of comedy. I really enjoy the way that the story unfolds.

8 – Shaun of the Dead

Basically anything that Edgar Wright does is brilliant, and his work with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost at the top of what he does. The start of their parody trilogy, Shaun of the Dead is a humorous look at a zombie apocalypse. Oddly enough, though, not my highest zombie comedy. This one just parodies zombie films so well and also is just very British. If you haven’t seen it, check it out, I think even if you don’t like zombies normally, this parodies it just so well.

7 – Cockneys vs Zombies

Straight into the other zombie film, this one is a much smaller budget but funnier in my opinion. Some of that is because it has Shaun of the Dead leading the way, but also because it’s just more British. They weren’t trying to create something to hit theaters, they just wanted to make something very goofy. And it works, with a cast that isn’t highly recognizable, the tropes it plays off of are and the acting is good enough to really make it work. It has some of the most iconic zombie moments I’ve seen, such as a slow speed chase that I won’t spoil, but so good. This does lean into a bit more of the zombie gore that you’d expect, so probably not where I’d start with zombie comedies.

6 – The Fifth Element

The Fifth Element is one of those movies that whenever it’s on TV, I have to stop and watch it, at least for a minute, which is bad because it’s always on TV. The absurd world that is created and the juxtaposition of Bruce Willis and Chris Tucker’s characters just works so extremely well. And to have Gary Oldman in a role that is completely out there is fun as well. This film really shouldn’t work, there are so many random parts working against each other, but it’s just a hot mess but an enjoyable and very funny one. Maybe not originally meant to be a comedy, because of how it plays out, it’s hard to see it as anything else than that, with some adventure undertones.

5 – Doctor Strangelove

Back into older films, Doctor Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Love the Bomb is a satire of American lifestyle and the power and destruction that it might be bring, but at the same time having much more going on than that. Peter Sellers does a great job in all of the roles that he plays in the film, and it just moves along so quickly as well. The whole thing is completely absurd and doesn’t ever really stop pushing itself further out there. And it’s not just simple comedy in the film, but there’s a lot more going on, which was fun to dig into after a few viewings. I think this film still holds up even with it being a bit older.

4 – Hot Fuzz

The second film from Edgar Wright and Nick Frost and Simon Pegg makes the list a bit higher than Shaun of the Dead. This film, because I think we’re all more familiar with cop shows, just has the parodying nature work better. This whole play on a buddy cop film and just even regular cop films works really well, and the jokes are very good. While there is a bit of gore, the whole thing plays out well in the film and definitely a parody worth checking out, especially if you’re not sure about parodies.

3 – Big Trouble in Little China

Jack Burton is an incompetent buffoon who happens to stumble onto some Big Trouble in Little China. What works so well in this film is that fairly often an incompetent main character will luck their way into being the hero in the end. In the end, though, Jack Burton is still an incompetent buffoon who has to be saved by a lot of other people throughout the film and can’t do really anything for himself when stuff starts to get weird. However, when stuff gets weird, you start to get a lot of good comedic moments as Burton needs to be bailed out of situation after situation. Definitely a cult classic comedy.

2 – Tucker and Dale vs Evil

What happens when you go up to the cabin for the weekend with a bunch of college friends? Nothing good, that’s for sure, and those hillbillies who live next door, they are definitely trouble and out to kill you. Then, deaths start to happen, and it’s totally them. But Tucker and Dale aren’t killers, they’re actually just pretty laid back good guys who are getting way to stressed out as the college friends start dropping like flies and they keep on getting blamed. A great parody of standard horror tropes, while definitely bloody and gross at times, it’s simply so funny with all the misunderstandings that happen.

1 – Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

So, by now you’ll see that I like parodies and satires a lot, and at the top of my list, it’s no exception. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is an amazing film that parodies buddy cop films, Robert Downey Jr’s criminal character accidentally stumbling into a casting room and then getting paired up with a hyper particular Val Kilmer to learn how to become a detective just works so well. The whole thing is completely absurd and plays off of the trope of two seemingly unconnected stories actually being connected. This one is just over the top, and it has a big name cast that works really well.

What are some of your favorite comedy movies? Do you like a more slapstick style of comedy, or dark comedy, parody, what is your favorite type?

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Will any of those movies make my list, you’ll have to see, but the big movies this year, for me, were primarily Marvel movies, and with #10MinMarvel podcast, I might like Marvel a little bit.

5 – Tucker & Dale vs Evil
What happens when a group of college students go out to a remote cabin to have a fun weekend? Clearly, the locals are going to attack them, but Tucker & Dale vs Evil does a fun twist on that. If you want a horror comedy film with some over the top deaths, this is a great film. Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk do amazing work in this film being the locals in this film, and how everything happens around them is great. I think that even if you don’t love horror, this is a film that it’s so on the edge of everything that you’ll like this film. If you do like horror, you’ll appreciate the tropes that they use throughout the film and how they subvert them often.

4 – Dog Soldier
Probably the least well known movie on my list, but one that I enjoy a lot. This is from Neil Marshall who directed the battle of the wall in Game of Thrones, or at least one of the episodes around that. He also has done The Descent which is really good as well, but Dog Soldier is my favorite. It’s not a big budget film, but it does horror well. What works well in this film is that it creates a limited area for the characters to interact with the world. So they are cut off, but more than that, they are stuck in a small area, and I think when horror films go too big with the world, it makes it less of a horror film, and that’s actually a trope that another film I like picks up on, see the honorable mentions below.

3 – John Wick
This was a new to me movie this year, and it was a lot of fun to binge through the series of movies quickly. But the first one is my favorite of them. The world in this movie and the sequels is cool, but what everyone is there for is the gun fu/gun kata action, and John Wick has some great action. There’s a scene at a club where there is a gun fight that goes across several floors and it works really really well. This film doesn’t have an extremely heavy plot, but it works well enough to get you into the action and Keanu Reeves is a lot of fun in this film. If you are looking for a straight up action film, this is one of the best that has come out recently.

2 – Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
I really enjoy this film in terms of a dumb pulp sort of film. You get a convoluted plot where you have a giant mystery that ties everything together. I really like the performances in this movie. Robert Downey Jr. does a great job especially in this film, and it’s before Iron Man. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is a lot of fun. It isn’t a deep film, but probably my most watched film of all time. I also like that this is a satire of the buddy cop genre of films as well, and done really well that way.

1 – Avengers: Infinity War
Now, as you’ve seen, I don’t have Endgame on the list. I think that the two movies are tied together so closely, that it felt a little bit odd putting them both on there. For me, Infinity War is the slightly better film. Some of it is that it doesn’t have that superhero ending, you end up in a bad place, and that is really interesting, without it being a super dark and depressing again, for a superhero movie. So you get something you’re very familiar with because it has that heroic feel, but at the same time, it subverts expectations. While it might not be the Marvel movie I want to watch the most, but for me, it’s the best Marvel movie.

There are so many good movies, I could easily do my top 5 Marvel movies and it would be pretty close to my top 5 movies of all time. I didn’t want to repeat anything on the list, but that’s what honorable mentions are for.

Honorable Mention:
Cabin in the Woods
Avengers: Endgame
Thor: Ragnorak
Dr. Strangelove
The Fifth Element
The Last Witch Hunter

As you can see, I really love the highly critically acclaimed movies, outside of superhero movies. My taste is really all over the place, but most of the time I just want to sit down an watch a movie that is fun, and not have to think about things too much, so that’s why t hings like The Fifth Element and The Last Witch Hunter make my list.

What are some of your favorite movies? Is there any crossover with my top 5 list?

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Clank! In! Space! is a deck building game at it’s core, but beyond that, you’re doing something more with your cards to just purchase more cards. In the game, you are on Lord Eradikus’s ship as a bunch of different adventurers. You’re trying to break through his security, steal some artifacts that he’s stolen and get back out without bungling around too much and making too much noise. This is easier said than done, because some of the good cards that would allow you to fight more or move more are going to give you clank as you make noise. If you’re too noisy, there’s a better chance of Lord Eradikus’s henchmen finding you and punching in the face.

That seems like a bit more going on in Clank! In! Space! than in Dominion. The various resources on your cards all make sense as you are getting money/recruitment power, movement, and fighting abilities versus the more generic money, action, and buy. Your movement, the equivalent to Dominion’s actions, actually moves you around a board, and you have to plot out how you’re going to go and how you might be able to get through the space ship quickly and gain access to the treasure vault on one end of the ship. The buying of cards does still have the thematic disconnect, though, if the argument is that Lord Eradikus has a giant ship, and why wouldn’t he, these are people working or prisoners on his ship, or could even be people you’ve hired to show up to help you, some of them are just showing up later rather than at the beginning. Definitely not the strongest ties for the people you recruit, but the items make a lot of sense to be there, lying around the ship. And the bad guys are definitely out there patrolling the corridors.

While the deck building part is the biggest part of the game, it isn’t the most fun. The most fun part of the game is the Clank! (Just feels like it should always have the exclamation point). The noise that you make is denoted by cubes, and when a card with Lord Eradikus shows up in the adventure area, all the cubes you’ve added to a pool get put into a bag, and depending on how mad Lord Eradikus, a number of cubes are drawn from the deck. If you’re color of cube is drawn, you take damage, and if your damage track ever fills up, you are knocked out. So you’re trying to make as little noise as possible, but it’s still possible, even if you are the noisiest one on the ship that your color won’t be drawn. And there are things that make Lord Eradikus madder and drawing more cubes. Once you’ve breached his security system, he gets madder, once you steal and artifact, he get’s madder, and if you find one of his personal diaries, he gets madder.

So, in case you haven’t picked up on it, another good part of Clank! In! Space! is how seriously it takes itself. There are nods on basically every card to some Sci-Fi TV Show, Movie, or Book, or if not that, some pun being made.  Star Wars, Star Trek, Tron, Chronicles of Riddick, Enders Game, The Fifth Element, and more show up and they are really well done. I didn’t get a chance to read all of the extra text on cards that I got in the game or that were out there, but each of them has a little line at the bottom so if it wasn’t already obvious what Sci-Fi thing it was spoofing, it would be clear. Even the adventurers you are playing, their meeples (wooden figures) are nods to sci-fi characters. That keeps this game from becoming too intense while playing it, but you still do feel the pressure of trying to gather points on the ship and trying to get off as quickly as possible so that you can score the most points and hopefully stop the other players from escaping the ship.

This is a well designed game and has a few differences, so I’ve heard, from the original game of Clank! which was a dungeon delve where you were trying to avoid a black dragon who was after you. To me, the theme of space and sci-fi makes more sense than a dungeon delve would as there are more things to Clank! about with on a space ship. And once you’ve played a few hands of this game, you start to know what you are doing right away, the biggest question is always what you’re going to buy or recruit and if you can fight someone. But everything is limited by the cards so that makes it simple. Even the card combo powers, where having a tech guy might cause another tech character to be better, those are easy to spot. The fact that there are only three different factions of cards means that you don’t have to think about the combos as much.

Finally, one fun thing about the game is the board. The board is set-up so that it slightly looks like a spaceship, but that’s not really the fun part of the board. The fun part of the board is the fact that three parts of it are modular. That means you can adjust the configuration of the board, and not just that, t hose three parts are double sided, so you have six potential modules to throw in the board. That means that you can change up the board from game to game, even by just moving the same modules into different positions. We played with the recommended starting game, but by just moving things around slightly, the game could be quite different.

Clank! In! Space! is a very fun game. It does run a little bit longer than some games. With three players, I think it took us an hour and a half, however, that was with us learning the game as well. I think once everyone knows the game, it would probably take an hour or less because the hands play out quickly once you know what cards you have. I do wonder a little bit about the long term replayability of the game, but there’s an expansion out there that I’ve heard adds some more interesting parts to the game, and with the modular board and a large deck of cards to recruit and fighting bad guys from, I think it’ll stick around for a while. I also like it because it has more of a game to it than Dominion does so while the hands play themselves, it’s way less auto-pilot than Dominion is.

Overall Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: B
Casual Grade: B+

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Kristen and I got a chance to see this on Tuesday, and it’s officially releasing on July 21st, 2017. So as you’re making your plans for the weekend, I get to help you answer the question: is Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets worth seeing?

The story is based on a French comic called Valerian and Laureline, which was first published in 1967 and wrapped up in 2010. Needless to say, they didn’t try and fit the whole story into the movie. The story revolves around the two main characters, Valerian and Laureline, as they try and determine what is going on in Alpha City, the City of a Thousand Planets, and why an attack is happening that is making parts of the city and station uninhabitable. This city was sent away from its decaying Earth orbit after it got too large, but that was 400 years ago. Since then, this city, which had a good number of alien inhabitants while around Earth, has picked up many, many more aliens, and everyone lives together peacefully for the most part. However, there is a zone of radiation that is growing, making parts of the station uninhabitable. So Valerian and Laureline are tasked with helping Commander Filitt, played by Clive Owen, find out who is behind it all.

Some initial thoughts about this movie — first of all, it was better than I expected. I thought it was very likely that we would see nearly all of the thousand alien races, but we probably only saw several dozen It was still a lot, but the trailers made this movie look like it was going to be shiny alien races galore and not much plot. Now, that’s not to say that there is a great plot — there are multiple plot threads and one that runs throughout the whole thing, but it isn’t a tightly constructed plot. In fact, we meet a character pretty early on in the film who seems to be a Chekhov’s gun; however, the film then forgets about him, and we’re left wondering whether there was something left on the editing room floor, or if the writers just forgot to come back to him. The best compliment that I can pay to this film is that it is very reminiscent of The Fifth Element, another Luc Besson film (albeit shinier — which wasn’t always in its favor).

Let’s talk about the acting in this film. The simplest way to put it was that it was kind of a hot mess. This film focuses heavily on the characters of Valerian and Laureline played by Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne. It seems Valerian is supposed to be very like Korben Dallas from The Fifth Element; however, in Bruce Willis’s portrayal of Dallas, the character had rough edges but ends up being generally likable. Though it’s clear that DeHaan’s Valerian is supposed to be likable, he isn’t given the same rough edges and depth that Korben Dallas has. Some of that is because the portrayals of Laureline by Cara Delevingne and Bubble by Rihanna, both whom are evidently supposed to help Valerian grow and develop as a character, do not work all that well as foils to him. Rihanna’s performance generally just seemed to take up space in the film, as it ended up adding nothing besides a dance scene and an attempt at boosting Valerian’s character growth. Cara Delevingne’s performance was better; however, her acting range seems limited, so while she was believable, for the most part, as the government agent partnered with Valerian, she wasn’t as believable as a character who was supposed to grow significantly like Valerian and also encourage him to be a better person. While DeHaan did a decent job of trying to show that growth, the fact that Delevingne’s acting style is reminiscent of Nicholas Cage’s (i.e. they seem to basically play themselves in films) meant that there wasn’t much for DeHaan to play off of. Despite these flaws, though, there were a few solid performances. For example, Sam Spruell, who plays a General on the Alpha Base/City was really enjoyable to watch, and it was compelling to see him make tough decisions.

The aliens in the world are generally well done. However, they weren’t without flaws either. There is an alien race that you meet early on, called the Pearls, that felt like a miss to me. They are generally humanoid and almost remind one of the aliens from Avatar. They were presented as a very happy and peaceful race, and this was conveyed through their flowing, almost dance-like way of moving. This didn’t make any sense to me, though, as it would be impossible to maintain without having much more muscular shoulders than these aliens had; they were generally tall and wispy looking. This was a shame, as we meet them early on, and it gives the film a bit of a rocky start. But the CGI and other special effects were generally quite well done.

One last critical note — I do want to talk a little bit about the length of this film, and some issues with the story itself that I saw, without giving away too much. This film is two and a half hours long, which I felt was a good 45 minutes too long for the material in the film. Now, some of this comes from the creators trying to jam more aliens into this film than needed, but a fair amount of it is just odd pacing, or odd additions of comedy at certain points. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets needed one more good pass-through by the editors, director, and studio to trim the fat. It also needed better direction in terms of the protagonists’ relationship — since the movie takes place in under 24 hours, it feels like the studio determined that the film needed to include a complete love story that resolved by the end. That was just a bad plan, as it felt rushed, and there was no real reason to bring it full-circle. I felt it would have been more compelling if, at the end, they’d had the girl kiss the guy and say something like, “We’ll see where this leads down the road,” to leave things more open-ended. There was no real reason to rush it and force it.

So I’ve talked about how this film was better than I expected — so why was that the case? First off, I’m sure it was partly because it exceeded my expectations by a long way. I was pretty sure from seeing the trailer that while it looked like it could be interesting, it was more likely going to be mostly a slog, punctuated by lots of pretty or impressive-looking aliens with no strong plot to pull it together. However, it did have a decent overarching plot (albeit a bit weak and overdone). Second, I liked it because it has a nostalgia factor due to its simliarity to The Fifth Element. These two films very much feel like they’re essentially the same film, and that’s not a bad thing. I still prefer The Fifth Element to Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, but there was something familiar about the film that made it more enjoyable for me. Finally, once you figure out that it isn’t trying to be a serious film and that it’s meant to be a popcorn flick, it allows you to enjoy some of the more well-done characters — for example, the Shingouz, who are information brokers. The three of them go to great, comical lengths to get Laureline to like them, and feel like a cross between Alf and half Howard the Duck.

What is my final takeaway from this movie? In short, it’s a popcorn movie; there isn’t much more to it than that. It touches loosely on some deeper themes, like the pitfalls of colonialism, but that mainly felt a bit borrowed from Avatar and didn’t add a great deal to the story. Is it worth seeing in theaters? It certainly was pretty to see in 3D, and there are lot of shiny aliens and special effects, but I don’t know that I would want to pay full price to go see it. This film is not a great piece of filmmaking, but I and most of the theater found it quite enjoyable nonetheless.

Critical Grade: D

Popcorn Grade: B-

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