Sometimes its not enough to laugh at lighthearted nonsense. Sometimes we need a little gallows humor in our life. So, here’s to the twisted laughter that goes along with a high body count. Enjoy you sick bastards.
- In Bruges- This is one of those comedies where the plot doesn’t sound like a comedy at all. After all this film is about two hitmen lying low after one of them accidentally kills a child on a job. But the ever-increasing absurdity of it all makes it so you can’t help but laugh even as the circumstances become more and more bloody.
- Heathers– Christian Slater, Winona Ryder, and a whole lot of dead bodies. This is not your typical teen movie. Made before disaffected youth murdering their classmates became an all too real world happening, this black comedy deconstructs the tropes of the typical 80s coming of age movies and throws in some wickedly dark snark for good measure. For obvious reasons a film like this would never get made today but its all right to go back and enjoy this one.
- Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb- It’s not the first dark comedy not is it necessarily the best, but it is the most famous. Director Stanley Kubrick and comedic legend Peter Sellers are an unlikely pair, but their collective genius is on full display here in this Cold War satire whose view on war and mutually assured destruction is as cuttingly accurate now as it was then. One of the all-time greats.
- Harold and Maude– What do you get when you mix a suicide obsessed young man and a seventy-nine-year-old woman with zero inhibitions? One of the greatest comedies of all time. And while it is laugh-out-loud funny, the film still manages to be a poignant meditation on what it means to be alive. An all-time classic.
- Kind Hearts and Coronets– I’m going old school with this one. In order to become a duke, an outcast young man decides to murder the eight members of his family standing between him and his title. All eight are played by Sir Alec Guinness some thirty years before his Obi-Wan days. An absolutely wicked delight.
- Death at a Funeral- The British version not the American remake. A film about fathers, sons, and why you should never do excessive amounts of a pharmaceutical-grade hallucinogenic before a funeral. Oh, and Peter Dinklage shows up with some very naughty pictures and a plan for blackmail. Uproariously funny.
- Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance): Michael Keaton leads an all-star cast in a film about an aging actor known for a superhero role trying to launch a comeback with a Broadway play. Yeah, the film is more than meta. And Keaton plays untethered to reality better than anyone ever thought he could. The dialogue and the camera work are the standouts in this one.
- Four Lions– This British comedy about an inept terrorist cell’s attempt to carry out a suicide bombing is a dark, clever satire that will have you in stitches. With a script that deftly deals with a taboo topic and a cast whose comedic timing is flawless, Four Lions manages to dodge any kind of controversy while still delivering a subtle political message. A cult classic that not enough Americans have seen.
- Death to Smoochy– A cult classic and one of my absolute favorites. Ed Norton, John Stewart, and the late, great Robin Williams. This film has a little bit of everything, but the Ice Capades as a criminal enterprise might be my favorite.
- Delicatessen- Who knew post-apocalyptic cannibalism could be so funny?