Best Comedy Movies to Watch (+Mood: Lovely)
Need a chuckle? We know comedy gold can be hard to come by, so we’ve scoured the depths of the streaming landscape to dig it out. From dark humor to laugh-out-loud misadventures, these are the best comedies to stream now.
KPop Demon Hunters is adorable. The supernatural element adds an interesting twist to the familiar band plot, and writer-directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans brilliantly depict K-pop fandom’s good and bad sides through demonic protection and possession. But it’s impressive how the film handles the storytelling, the music, and the animation. They all work in […]
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What would you do when you win the lottery? Most people would travel, buy a home, spend it on all the things you love, and maybe invest it somewhere. In The Ballad of Wallis Island, Charles Heath does this and uses the remaining pot to bring together the separated folk duo he loves. It makes […]
“The healing power of art” sounds cheesy, but it’s a statement made beautiful and true in Ghostlight. It’s the sensitively told and wonderfully performed story of an ordinary man who, up until this point, doesn’t even know how Romeo and Juliet ends. That’s how detached he is from art. But when Rita (Dolly de Leon) […]
Based on the bestselling book of essays by Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things is, well, made of many tiny beautiful things. It’s at once a meditation on grief, a coming-of-age tale, a contemplation of family ties, a sobering look at a midlife crisis, a romance, a comedy, and an absolute tearjerker of a drama. It’s […]
To plenty of countries around the globe, democracy has become so ubiquitous that we forget it’s relatively new, at least relative to the rest of human history. Bhutan is one of the last countries that became a democracy, and writer-director Pawo Choyning Dorji chose to depict a slice of how they made the shift in […]
If you’re expecting the sleek, playful, and totally over-the-top spy shenanigans of 2005’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith, you’re not going to find it in this 2024 version, not that it’s a bad thing. In fact, this show stands on its own, reinventing the spy couple into a professional partnership rather than an immediate spark that […]
Only a few people in Dita’s house are related by blood, but you wouldn’t know that by how they move. They’re tight-knit but argumentative, loving at times but spiteful in other instances. In other words, they’re complicated just like any other family. Housekeeping for Beginners makes a compelling case for the validity—and at times necessity—of […]
When a show is focused on a kid and their sport, chances are, the main character holds a passion for the sport itself. They saw it, they thought it was cool, and they tried it out. Blue Box, however, takes an unconventionally depicted, but no less honest, motivation– the energizing power of having a crush. […]
Will and Harper’s premise is simple: two friends journey from one end of the States to another and, amid pit stops and bar hops, sunsets and beers, they talk about life, from its biggest concepts down to its tiniest details. The only difference in this case is that Will and Harper are navigating their friendship […]
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For better or for worse, every romantic relationship anyone will ever have will end. This isn’t a bitter statement single or heartbroken people declare, it’s just that we have to keep in mind that time with our loved ones is limited. Romcom drama We Live in Time is titled as such for a reason– mentioning […]
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Going to sleep is something we do every day, though, when we were kids, it certainly wasn’t easy. With family-friendly source material and a new (and adorable!) sleepytime ensemble, Orion and the Dark plays with this fact of childhood, but screenwriter Charlie Kaufman transforms it into something more as the title characters journey into literal […]
Man on the Inside may be a detective show, but at its core, it’s a series about the beauty and pain of aging. It follows recently widowed Charles as he befriends the residents at a nursing home he’s secretly investigating for thievery. Despite himself, Charles opens up, which complicates the case but gives the story […]
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No one watches a romantic comedy expecting anything novel, although it’s nice to be surprised once in a while. In the past years, we’ve seen movies like Rye Lane and Palm Springs subvert expectations and give the genre a pleasant, refreshing twist. Upgraded isn’t like those movies. It’s pretty standard and formulaic, but I would […]
Despite the fact that this isn’t the light fantasy romcom it seems to present itself as at the onset, Paging Mr. Darcy nevertheless becomes a breezy, likable little TV movie because it allows its main characters to be adult human beings. The story is still mostly fluff that ends far too abruptly, but for the […]
Be prepared to have the expectations you form after reading Scrapper’s synopsis shattered: though it is about a 12-year-old dealing with grief following her mother’s death, it’s remarkably upbeat. It gets that quality by positioning itself in the buoyant headspace of young Georgie, a resilient, cheeky youngster who retains much of her whimsical childlike spirit […]
Simple but lovely movies like Fallen Leaves are hard to come by these days. While others rely on complicated dialogue or overly ambitious premises to be deemed deep or important, Director Aki Kaurismäki trusts that his material is strong enough. After all, its silence speaks volumes; the characters don’t say much but when they do, […]
La Chimera is often meandering. Scenes flitter about and move at different paces, resembling dreams more than they do reality, but they’re hardly trivial. Just the opposite, they enchant you with their beauty and confront you with deep, existential questions that haunt you long after the film’s run. You won’t find obvious answers here though, […]
On the surface, The Makanai is a simple, slice-of-life show about food and friendship. While it is that, to be sure, it’s also a substantial drama that tackles questions about art vs. love, and love vs. companionship, and career vs. purpose. Under the gentle guidance of showrunner Hirokazu Kore-eda (Still Walking, Shoplifters, Broker), who generously […]
You don’t have to be a theater kid to enjoy this feel-good mockumentary set in a summer camp for junior thespians. While there are plenty of in-jokes here for those who might have spent a summer or two somewhere like AdirondACTS, Theater Camp also good-naturedly lampoons every instantly recognizable stereotype of theater kids and the […]
Jules’ wacky premise — an extra-terrestrial crash-lands in eccentric widower Milton’s (Ben Kingsley) flowerbeds — is a bit of a misdirection. While the movie is technically a sci-fi (featuring, as it does, some very out-there alien engineering), it’s really a charming, mostly-human drama about the isolation and surreality of aging. Though the mute presence of […]
Aptly for a film partly set in a fortune cookie factory, Fremont deals with luck — specifically, the other side of good luck: survivor’s guilt. Donya (played by real-life Afghan refugee Anaita Wali Zada) is a former translator for the US Army who fled her home city of Kabul on an emergency evacuation flight when […]
Who among us hasn’t committed a white lie to save a relationship? And who among us hasn’t yearned for the full and brutal truth? In You Hurt My Feelings, Nicole Holofcener digs into that paradox and delivers a film that is honest and funny in equal measure. Here, the writer-director doesn’t just use a hilarious […]
While the market for animation is mostly dominated by American 3D and Japanese anime, once in a while, a film outside the two industries comes up with an entirely new style of its own, with the design inspired by their respective countries. European animation has garnered some interest with Loving Vincent, but Chicken with Linda! […]
Given the title, it isn’t surprising that Falling in Love Like in Movies would be a metanarrative with the main romance mirroring the filmmaking and the filmmaking reflecting the main romance. It’s a familiar approach, and at first, Falling seems to follow the inevitable ending where the couple falls in love, but right on time, […]
As far as destination romantic comedies go, Irish Wish is at least self-aware enough to commit to its corniness without making its characters too insufferable to follow. For once avoidable misunderstandings don’t drive the conflict, as the story progresses as one extended “be careful what you wish for” journey of self-discovery. Still, one can’t help […]
Before he was a beloved TV star, comedian Alan Carr was a young boy growing up in a small town not quite ready for his shine. In Changing Ends, he takes us through that childhood, which is sometimes sweet, sometimes tough, but always comfortingly, relatably hilarious. By appearing in it and addressing us, present-day Carr […]
Rye Lane knows it’s treading familiar ground by having its charming leads fall in love as they walk and talk their way through a beautiful city. So instead of experimenting on a tried-and-tested setup, it smartly focuses on specificity. It hones in on the characters’ Gen Z woes and cranks up the British references, giving […]
Life never goes the way we expect, especially for those who don’t have plenty of options. Because of this, parents strive to create a path for their kids to the best possible future they can manage, even if it causes some resentment. The Good Bad Mother portrays this, with some melodramatic flair, but the way […]
Growing up in multiple foster homes to an absentee mother and imprisoned father, Paige Alexander (Kerry Washington) has had a tough life, but you wouldn’t know from the way she carries herself. She’s bright, cheerful, and constantly buoyed by her ambitious hopes for upward mobility. But there are cracks to her facade, and all the […]
That this film, an adaptation of a beloved classic and girlhood staple for 50 years and counting, is able to retain the same power, charm, and wisdom as the source material by Judy Blume is impressive in and of itself. Director Kelly Fremon Craig (Edge of Seventeen) turns the must-read novel into a must-see film, […]
With all the holiday-themed movies and shows that pop up on streaming at this time of year, it’s incredibly refreshing to find one that manages to make a formula work simply by being excellent at its fundamentals. With an eminently likable lead in Katlego Lebogang, Yoh! Christmas (which is based on Netflix’s own 2019 Norwegian […]
Michelle Buteau is the hilarious and charismatic lead of this amazingly diverse and body-positive comedy. In her post-breakup glow-up, Buteau’s character Mavis takes no prisoners as she prioritizes herself and her career with the help of her equally funny and wholesomely supportive friends. As with any comedy, there are some cheesy punchlines, but the humor […]
After a whole pandemic, rising inflation, and a whole climate crisis the world hasn’t yet resolved, it can be hard to feel hope towards a new day. However, the third collaboration between director Oh Choong-hwan and screenwriter Park Hye-ryun feels like a reminder to keep hope despite life’s circumstances. Castaway Diva has the classic manic […]
An all-female action comedy that doesn’t get self-serious about the way it’s subverting the genre — Wingwomen feels like a breath of fresh air. It wisely grasps that plot isn’t paramount for a movie like this, and so it joyously dunks on cerebral scenarios with its unabashedly silly story convolutions, like when its professional thieves […]
Do we need to convince you about the spectacle of half naked, handsome, buff men wrestling? Like Flowers in Sand has plenty of that, with Jang Dong-yoon at the helm, but it’s more than just eye candy. It’s a warm, down-to-earth sports drama celebrating Korea’s traditional wrestling, set in the county that is known for […]
There are a plethora of father-son road trips in film, but rarely portrayed on the path are fathers with their trans sons. That is because most queer stories often focus on the romance, and if not the romance, the coming out process. Runs in the Family does things differently – it’s the connection between trans […]
If there are parts to Rookie’s story that seem too easily resolved—for the sake of making this more of a feel-good movie—these shortcuts still serve a genuinely romantic central relationship that develops in the most organic way possible. Besides the school’s stifling conservatism, there’s nothing that really stands in the way of Ace and Jana’s […]