Category Archives: Comedy

The Naked Gun (2025) review — Shooting blanks

August 2, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Akiva Schaffer | Written by Schaffer, Dan Gregor, and Doug Mand, based on the TV series Police Squad, by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker | ▲1/2 Hollywood is excited by this late-arriving sequel/reboot because mainstream, broad comedy has been a non-starter on the big screen for years. Even the sequel to…Read More

Together review — The horror of pairing up

August 1, 2025 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Michael Shanks | 102 min | ▲▲▲▲1/2 | VOD One of my biggest gripes about horror movies as a genre is how few genuinely fresh ideas are produced within it. Filmmakers are inordinately satisfied with regurgitating the same jump-scares, the same stomach-churning gore, the same themes. So when someone shows up…Read More

Happy Gilmore 2 review — Below par, but a good walk

July 30, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Kyle Newacheck | Written by Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler | 114 min | ▲▲1/2 | Netflix Can you believe it's been almost 30 years since Happy Gilmore came out? It remains Adam Sandler's most beloved film — I mean, besides Punch Drunk Love — and he's finally come up with a sequel.…Read More

Oh, Hi! review — Twisted, hilarious romantic comedy

July 24, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Sophie Brooks | Written by Brooks and Molly Gordon | 94 min | ▲▲▲1/2 Iris (Gordon, a Booksmart veteran) and Isaac (Logan Lerman) are off for a weekend in the New York countryside at a gorgeous farmhouse. They're in that honeymoon phase of their relationship — he's saying and doing all the right…Read More

The Phoenician Scheme review — Fresh artifice from Wes Anderson

June 16, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Wes Anderson | Written by Anderson and Roman Coppola | 101 min | ▲▲ By my count this is the third of Wes Anderson's current chapter, this particular stage in his hyper-formal, hyper-art designed films eschewing locations outside a studio. It started with The French Dispatch. I felt alienated by that film, but…Read More

From The Vault: Highpoint (1982) review

June 1, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Peter Carter | Written by Dick Guttman and Ian Sutherland | 87 min | ▲1/2 | DVD It felt appropriate on the weekend of the Canadian Screen Awards to dig into the dark, dirty past of the Canadian movie business. Highpoint was made during the much-maligned tax shelter years in Canadian film, a time…Read More

Friendship review — Stay curious!

May 25, 2025 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Andrew DeYoung | 100 min | ▲▲▲▲1/2 Maybe fans of I Think You Should Leave, Tim Robinson's TV series, will have some sense of what to expect with this movie, but I went in blind — just knowing that it is an awkward picture about middle-aged men and friendship. It is that,…Read More

Another Simple Favor review — A disappointing kindness

May 5, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Paul Feig | Written by Jessica Sharzer and Laeta Kalogridis, based on characters created by Darcey Bell | 120 min | ▲▲ | Prime There's a theory in sequels that if the characters, beloved in the original, travel to some far-off destination to "spice up the story" in an exotic locale, it's set…Read More

The Accountant 2 review — Tax free fun and games

May 2, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Gavin O'Connor | Written by Bill Dubuque | 132 min | ▲▲▲1/2 The arrival of a sequel to the 2016 Ben Affleck actioner prompted me to go back and watch the nine-year-old original again. I think I might've been a little too hard on The Accountant in my review. It was more entertaining…Read More

The Ballad of Wallis Island review — Sweet, but slightly out of tune

April 20, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by James Griffiths | Written by Tom Basden and Tim Key | 99 min | ▲▲1/2 Basden and Key are British comedy writers who've been developing this material for years, adapting their own short film going back to 2007. The years of chemistry is clear in their performances, which aids this modest, if predictable…Read More