No streamer is harder to navigate than Amazon Prime Instant Video. It has a huge amount of content—the volume is genuinely ridiculous—and then barely categorizes or organizes them in any coherent way. There’s so much stuff to watch here that finding it can be a nuisance, even through the official Prime Video apps. Much of what you’ll find are TV shows, including several Amazon originals, and thousands of other things you’ve probably never heard of before or since. There’s also a large library of hilarious movies, though, including some of the most beloved and influential comedies ever made. That’s what we’re here to share with you today: the best comedies on Amazon Prime Video.
For a broader list, check out The Best Movies on Amazon Prime or you can peruse The Best Comedy Movies on Netflix
Here are the best comedy movies available to stream for free with Amazon Prime, in alphabetical order:
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Year: 2005
Director: Judd Apatow
Stars: Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, Romany Malco, Kat Dennings, Elizabeth Banks, Leslie Mann
Rating: R
Judd Apatow emerged as a major new voice in the world of romantic comedy with his first directorial effort, The 40-Year-Old Virgin–a big, goofy, hilarious mess of a movie that is anchored by the easy charm of its two principal leads, Steve Carell and Catherine Keener. Their no-nonsense romance is surprisingly understated and adult in a movie with an outrageous premise and lewd jokes. Leslie Mann also deserves credit for that hilarious French toast scene.—Jeremy Medina
Another Round
Year: 2020
Director: Thomas Vinterberg
Stars: Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Lars Ranthe, Magnus Millang
Rating: NR
In Thomas Vinterberg’s new film Another Round, camaraderie starts out as emotional support before dissolving into male foolishness cleverly disguised as scientific study: A drinking contest where nobody competes and everybody wins until they lose. Martin (Mads Mikkelsen), a teacher in Copenhagen, bobs lazily through his professional and personal lives: When he’s at school he’s indifferent and when he’s at home he’s practically alone. Martin’s closest connections are with his friends and fellow teachers, Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), Nikolaj (Magnus Millang) and Peter (Lars Ranthe), who like many dudes of a certain age share his glum sentiments. To cure their malaise, Nikolaj proposes putting Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skårderud’s blood alcohol content theory to the test: Skårderud maintains that hovering at a cool 0.05% BAC helps people stay relaxed and loose, thus increasing their faculty for living to the fullest. As one of the day’s preeminent screen actors, Mikkelsen finds the sweet spot between regret and rejoicing, where his revelries are honest and true while still serving as covers for deeper misgivings and emotional rifts. Sorrow hangs around the edges of his eyes as surely as bliss spreads across his face with each occasion for drinking. That balancing act culminates in an explosive burst of anger and, ultimately, mourning. Good times are had and good times always end. What Another Round demonstrates right up to its ecstatic final moments, where Mikkelsen’s sudden and dazzling acrobatics remind the audience that before he was an actor he was a dancer and gymnast, is that good times are all part of our life cycle: They come and go, then come back again, and that’s better than living in the good times all the time. Without a pause we lose perspective on all else life has to offer, especially self-reflection. —Andy Crump
Asteroid City
Year: 2023
Director: Wes Anderson
Stars: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Maya Hawke, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber
Rating: PG-13
While The French Dispatch crammed an impressive amount of narrative into its kinetic structure, Asteroid City’s journey to the intersection between California, Arizona and Nevada feels positively placid. The film is a story within a story, structured as a television show about a playwright trying to put together a production called “Asteroid City.” We bounce back and forth from the TV movie about the creation of the play, to a production of the play itself using the same characters, switching between black-and-white sequences narrated by a Rod Serling-like Bryan Cranston, and the Kodachrome splendor realized in the desert setting on the virtual stage. Thus, we have actors being actors playing actors, the kind of narrative playfulness that’s too often ignored when focusing on Anderson’s iconic visuals and soundtrack choices. The result is a meta-narrative constantly folding back on itself (in one of the film’s more playful moments, Cranston’s character accidentally appears in the color sequence, and quickly sees himself out), an alien invasion adventure story and family drama wrapped within the setting of a classic Western, where offramps literally lead nowhere and the seemingly regular shootout down the main street is the only interruption to what otherwise bucolic setting. From the opening moments, the immaculate production design explodes off the screen, the onscreen filigrees and dynamic color scheme a feast for the eye. There’s a mix between the stagey and the decidedly down to earth, with hand-painted signs advertising milkshakes dwarfed by background rock formations that are as theatrical as any Broadway flat. It’s but one way the film toys with our perception of the characters, both believing in their small and intimate moments, but always made aware of the artifice. There are of course many cinematic references, from the schlock of ‘50s sci-fi to more than a hint of Close Encounters that also fueled last year’s Nope. There are also echoes to many of Anderson’s own films. There’s so much joy on screen, so much playfulness, that it’s perhaps churlish to complain about any missteps. While not as deeply moving as some, or downright thrilling as others in Anderson’s filmography, it’s a journey to the desert well worth taking.—Jason Gorber
Beetlejuice
Year: 1988
Director: Tim Burton
Stars: Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, Catherine O’Hara, Jeffrey Jones
Rating: PG
After a little vacation, Barbara and Adam Maitland find some uninvited guests in their homes. Okay, so maybe they died, and maybe their house was sold to some poor, unsuspecting (but equally annoying) couple–that doesn’t mean Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin have to like it. After some failed haunting attempts, the Maitlands make the mistake of hiring a “bio-exorcist” Betelgeuse (played perfectly by a never-more-revolting Michael Keaton) to fumigate the place of the living. As this situation tends to go, the hired gun gets out of control, and we’re left with Tim Burton’s wacky vision of a ghoul gone really bad. Its good humor and (sort of) likable antagonist make this one the rare cinematic ghost story that most of the family can enjoy, although Keaton certainly tosses out a few veiled adult jokes for the ages. —Tyler Kane
The Big Sick
Year: 2017
Director: Michael Showalter
Stars: Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter
Rating: R
The Big Sick can sometimes be awfully conventional, but among its key assets is its radiant view of its characters. Based on the first year in the relationship of married screenwriters Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, this indie rom-com has a mildly risky structure and some trenchant observations about the culture clashes that go on in immigrant families living in America. But what cuts deepest is just how profoundly lovable these people are. That’s not the same as being cutesy: Rather, The Big Sick is defiantly generous, understanding that people are horribly flawed but also capable of immeasurable graciousness when the situation requires. So even when the film stumbles, these characters hold you up. Nanjiani plays a lightly fictionalized version of his younger self, a struggling Chicago stand-up who is having as much success in his career as he in his dating life. Born into a Pakistani family who moved to the United States when he was a boy, he’s a dutiful son, despite lying about being a practicing Muslim and politely deflecting the attempts of his parents (Anupam Kher, Zenobia Shroff) to set him up in an arranged marriage. That’s when he meets Emily (Zoe Kazan), an American grad student with whom he’s instantly smitten. She swears she doesn’t want a relationship, but soon they fall for one another—even though Kumail knows it can’t work out. What’s most radical about The Big Sick is its optimistic insistence that a little niceness can make all the difference. —Tim Grierson
Billy Madison
Year: 1995
Director: Tamra Davis
Stars: Adam Sandler, Bradley Whitford, Bridgette Wilson, Darren McGavin, Norm Macdonald, Josh Mostel, Chris Farley, Steve Buscemi
Rating: PG-13
There’s a strong case to be made that Billy Madison is the best Adan Sandler movie. Sure, it’s not as human as The Wedding Singer, and it’s hard to vote against Happy Gilmore, but Madison so thoroughly exceeded the abominably low expectations I had for it in 1995 that it wound up being one of the most memorable movies of the decade. It’s still hilarious today, a perfect vehicle for Sandler’s man-child persona, and one that surrounds him with a fantastic supporting cast, including Bradley Whitford, Darren McGavin, Norm Macdonald, Chris Farley, and a giant penguin, among others. It’s not the story or even the jokes that make Billy Madison so funny–it’s the surreal flourishes, the way lines are delivered, how Tamra Davis (both a woman and an outsider to the small circle of men who have directed most of Sandler’s movies since) is able to contrast Sandler’s weirdness with a world that feels recognizable in its everyday mundanity. Later Sandler movies feel lazy and untethered from the real world, but Madison doesn’t suffer from either flaw. It’s dumb comedy done with enough weirdness and intelligence to become a true classic.–Garrett Martin
The Birdcage
Year: 1996
Director: Mike Nichols
Stars: Robin Williams, Gene Hackman, Nathan Lane, Dianne Wiest, Hank Azaria, Calista Flockhart, Christine Baranski, Dan Futterman
Rating: PG-13
You know what’s awkward? When you’re a middle-aged gay Jewish South Beach drag club owner (Armand, played by Robin Williams) and your straight son shows up and asks for your blessing to marry his girlfriend who is the daughter of a Neocon senator (Gene Hackman) who heads something called “The Coalition for Moral Order.” You want to support your kid, but you don’t love being closeted by him, and the dinner meet-up ends up meaning you and your partner, Albert (Nathan Lane), are forced into a whole new level of drag in which you are straight, a cultural attaché to Greece, and married to the one-night stand straight-sexperiment (Katherine, played by Christine Baranski) that led to the conception of your son. Your partner’s offended, the Senator’s being investigated by the tabloids, tensions are running high and your houseboy Agador (Hank Azaria) has agreed to transform into a Greek butler named “Spartacus,” but let’s face it, tensions are running high on all sides-and that’s before your baby-mama gets caught in traffic and Albert sees the opportunity for the drag role of a lifetime. Fully Shakespearean hijinks ensue. The 1996 Mike Nichols remake of Edouard Molinaro’s La Cage Aux Folles was not really blistering social commentary, but beneath its glib feel-good star-vehicle exterior there are some depths you could easily miss while you’re distracted by the batshit-crazy and heavily sequined antics of Williams and Lane. It’s actually not only rambunctious and witty but, as with many of Robin Williams’ film roles, The Birdcage has a serious streak where a genuine investigation of personal identity is underway, and hypocrisy, acceptance, snobbery, and most of all, everyone’s individual style of “drag” (and hey, we all have one, even if we don’t always express it by putting on fake lashes and singing Sondheim) gets taken out for a much-needed exam. —Amy Glynn
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
Year: 2020
Director: Jason Woliner
Stars: Sacha Baron Cohen, Maria Bakalova
Rating: R
The gung-ho hilarity and up-for-anything attitude Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova brings to the Borat sequel (playing Borat’s daughter, Tutar) makes for the closest thing to a can’t-miss-it performance that 2020 has provided. It’s one thing that Bakalova holds her own against Sacha Baron Cohen and his seasoned on-camera bravura. It’s another thing altogether to supplant him as the breakout of the sequel, shepherding the soul of a movie—that nobody expected to be as perversely touching as it is—while keeping in hilarious lockstep with the scuzzy legacy that the Borat name implies.
Since Borat Subsequent Moviefilm dropped on Amazon Prime, Rudy Giuliani has unsurprisingly remained the movie’s most noteworthy conversational export. News headlines about Giuliani and his most unusual way of removing a mic were the topic of the day at whatever the pandemic-era equivalent of the watercooler is. But it’s to the credit of Bakalova, the mockumentary’s other buzzed-about element and secret weapon, that its shocking climax is as effective as it is in targeting Donald Trump’s private attorney.—David Lynch
Bottoms
Year: 2023
Director: Emma Seligman
Stars: Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edebiri, Marshawn Lynch, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine, Ruby Cruz, Dagmara Domińczyk
Rating: R
Every now and then, a comedy rolls around that is delightfully unafraid of utter ridiculousness—of pushing buttons and boundaries until it’s blue in the face. Directed by Emma Seligman (Shiva Baby) in her sophomore feature, Bottoms is such a comedy. The film follows P.J. (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri), two wildly unpopular gay high schoolers who found a female fight club to impress their cheerleader crushes: Brittany (Kaia Gerber) and Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), respectively. This is a premise that naturally lends itself to a healthy dosage of humor, but Seligman doesn’t dare rely too heavily on her high-concept conceit. With the help of Sennott, who co-wrote the script, Seligman squeezes every ounce of humor out of each of the film’s thoughtfully-crafted scenarios—for better or worse. More often than not, this yields either shockingly bloody and hilarious visual gags, such as an impeccably-timed explosion or punch to the face, or masterfully-delivered punchlines about I-can’t-believe-she-went-there topics like bombs or abortions. In the rare moments that Bottoms takes a turn into sincerity, the dialogue is subtle yet acutely affecting, and indicates that its writers have a heartfelt understanding of what their characters are going through. If they had just sacrificed a couple of visual gags and attached their film a little more tightly to reality, Bottoms would be both poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. In her defense, it does make sense why Seligman wasn’t interested in giving up any of the film’s punchlines. She did, after all, hit the jackpot with one of the funniest ensemble casts of the past decade. The chemistry between the two leads is exquisite, which shouldn’t come as a surprise; the two previously spearheaded the uproarious Comedy Central web series Ayo and Rachel Are Single. When Seligman’s short film Shiva Baby premiered at South by Southwest back in 2018, audiences widely recognized the budding director as someone with a unique talent for whipping up a tight, sharp comedy in a small space. Now that her budget and scope are bigger, she has once again proven that she has an outstanding command over the genre.—Aurora Amidon
Coming 2 America
Year: 2021
Director: Craig Brewer
Stars: Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, Jermaine Fowler, Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan, KiKi Layne, Shari Headley, Wesley Snipes, James Earl Jones, John Amos
Rating: PG-13
Coming 2 America effectively uses the legacy of Zamunda to expand the narrative space not only of the classic original, but for Black diasporic affinity at large. At the end of the 1988 romantic comedy, the royal marriage of Akeem Joffer (Eddie Murphy) and Lisa McDowell (Shari Headley) further symbolically enmeshed the interconnected experience between African-Americans and Black Africans. In this sequel, the legacy of that union is explored through the gendered opportunities of Prince Akeem’s lineage and the pressure he faces to determine his royal successor—all while appeasing the tyrannical leader of Zamunda’s neighboring country Nextdoria, General Izzi (Wesley Snipes). Coming 2 America is an exciting follow-up that’s ensemble cast and increasingly complex musings mostly outweigh its shortcomings. In present-day Zamunda, Prince Akeem enjoys the company of his wife, his three badass warrior daughters and his dear albeit mischievous dude-in-waiting Semmi (Arsenio Hall). But when dying, nearly expired King Jaffe Joffer (James Earl Jones) reiterates that Akeem’s eldest daughter, Princess Meeka (KiKi Layne, Beale Street! Beale Street!) will not be eligible to inherit the throne because she is a woman, Akeem and Semmi return to Queens to find Akeem’s long-lost bastard son, Lavelle Junson (Jermaine Fowler). Of course, hijinks ensue along the way. Semmi and Akeem must fumble around a new New York stuffed less with mustard-colored cabs and more with rideshares. They become acquainted with an increasingly gentrified Queens, visit some familiar friends and meet new members of Akeem’s extended family as they court Lavelle. This film’s greater comedic elements come from these familiar moments of cross-cultural tension and new intergenerational differences. Coming 2 America is a deeply fun, goofy, incredibly cast Blackity-Black movie. Viewers be warned of the emotional whiplash they might receive from the returning likes of James Earl Jones and John Amos, as well as the steady stream of Black artists and icons from across the diaspora who make surprise appearances in the film. Coming 2 America achieves exactly what an effective sequel should: It reinforces themes from the original film while offering new, intriguing points of tension, nodding to old gags in a way that rewards fluent fans without alienating newbies.—Adesola Thomas
Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Year: 1964
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Stars: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens
Rating: PG
While attempting to adapt Peter George’s novel Red Alert for the big screen, director Stanley Kubrick found that he kept needing to cut out certain real-life details about the emergency nuclear bomb procedures because they were simply too absurd to work in a serious drama. Deciding to rewrite the project as a dark comedy, he recruited renowned satirist Terry Southern to help pen the script. From there, it’s all history. To this day, Peter Sellers’ three very different (and very funny) performances remain a feat by which few actors have matched. Moreover, the image of Slim Pickens riding the bomb to its destination as well as the final montage of destruction set to the wistful “We’ll Meet Again” are the stuff of movie legend. Worldwide Armageddon has never been so hilarious.—Mark Rozeman
Duck Soup
Year: 1933
Director: Leo McCarey
Stars: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Zeppo Marx, Margaret Dumont, Louis Calhern
Rating: NR
Although some critics would argue that Duck Soup’s pacing make it inferior to other films in the Marx catalog, the film’s incredible one-liners and the brothers’ great on-screen chemistry make it one of their most clearly beloved films. The audience sees Groucho’s spitfire mouth in its prime as Rufus T. Firefly, a newly appointed leader of the struggling country Freedonia, and it’s as much a solid chunk of hilarity as it is a satire of government and politics of the time. Harpo and Chico are incredible in their secondary parts as spies, showcasing their hold on slapstick and physical comedy that’s most pronounced in Harpo’s hilarious, near-blank facial expressions throughout. —Tyler Kane
The General
Year: 1926
Directors: Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckham
Stars: Joseph Keaton, Marion Mack, Glen Cavender
Rating: NR
When Yankee spies steal his locomotive and kidnap his girlfriend, a Southern railroad engineer (“The Great Stone Face” Buster Keaton) is forced to pursue his two beloveds across enemy lines. While a few Charlie Chaplin pictures give it a run for its money, The General is arguably the finest silent comedy ever made—if not the finest comedy ever made. At the pinnacle of Buster Keaton’s renowned career, the film didn’t receive critical or box-office success when released, but it has aged tremendously. It’s a spectacle of story, mishmashing romance, adventure, action (chases, fires, explosions) and comedy into a seamless silent masterpiece. —David Roark
Heathers
Year: 1989
Director: Michael Lehmann
Stars: Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Kim Walker
Rating: R
As much an homage to ’80s teen romps—care of stalwarts like John Hughes and Cameron Crowe—as it is an attempt to push that genre to its near tasteless extremes, Heathers is a hilarious glimpse into the festering core of the teenage id, all sunglasses and cigarettes and jail bait and misunderstood kitsch. Like any coming-of-age teen soap opera, much of the film’s appeal is in its vaunting of style over substance—coining whole ways of speaking, dressing and posturing for an impressionable generation brought up on Hollywood tropes—but Heathers embraces its style as an essential keystone to filmmaking, recognizing that even the most bloated melodrama can be sold through a well-manicured image. And some of Heathers’ images are indelible: J.D. (Christian Slater) whipping out a gun on some school bullies in the lunch room, or Veronica (Winona Ryder) passively lighting her cigarette with the flames licking from the explosion of her former boyfriend. It makes sense that writer Daniel Waters originally wanted Stanley Kubrick to direct his script: Heathers is a filmmaker’s (teen) film. —Dom Sinacola
His Girl FridayYear: 1940
Director: Howard Hawks
Stars: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy
Rating: PG
Special effects have become so sophisticated that many of us have probably forgotten how much pure amazement you can wreak with a great story and a script that doesn’t let up for one second. This amazing, dizzyingly paced screwball comedy by Howard Hawks stars Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, and takes us back into two of the decade’s hallmark preoccupations: The “remarriage comedy” and the intrigue and obsessiveness of the newspaper world. The minute Russell’s Lindy Johnson stalks into the newspaper office run by her ex-husband Walter Burns (Grant), you know it’s to tell him she’s getting remarried and leaving journalism to raise a family, and you know that’s not how it’s going to end. No high-suspense mystery here. What puts you on the edge of your seat in this film is how you get there. Hilariously acted and expertly filmed, His Girl Friday derives much of its comedic impact from the incredibly clever and lightning-fast banter of the characters. Don’t even think about checking your phone while you’re watching this. In fact, try to blink as little as possible. —Amy Glynn
The Kentucky Fried MovieYear: 1977
Director: John Landis
Stars: Evan C. Kim, Master Bong Soo Han, Bill Bixby, George Lazenby, Henry Gibson, Donald Sutherland, Tony Dow, Boni Enten
Rating: R
Sketch comedy is rarely consistent, which makes the reliably hilarious Kentucky Fried Movie even more impressive. It might not entirely hold up today, over 40 years after it was first released, but in its day this anthology contained some of the sharpest and most transgressive parodies of pop culture yet seen, from trailers for fake exploitation films like Cleopatra Schwartz, to the absurd educational strip parody of “Zinc Oxide and You,” to the long-form Bruce Lee satire A Fistful of Yen. It also launched the careers of John Landis, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, who would all go on to define comedy over the next decade.–Garrett Martin
Love & Friendship
Year: 2016
Director: Whit Stillman
Stars: Kate Beckinsale, Chloe Sevigny, Xavier Samuel
Rating: PG
The title of Whit Stillman’s latest comedy may be Love & Friendship, but while both are certainly present in the film, other, more negative qualities also abound: deception, manipulation, even outright hatred. Underneath its elegant period-picture surface—most obviously evident in Benjamin Esdraffo’s Baroque-style orchestral score and Louise Matthew’s ornate art direction—lies a darker vision of humanity that gives the film more of an ironic kick than one might have anticipated from the outset. Still, the humor in Love & Friendship is hardly of the misanthropic sort. As always with Stillman, his view of the foibles of the bourgeois is unsparing yet ultimately empathetic. Which means that, even as Stillman works his way toward a happy ending of sorts, the film leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste—which is probably as it should be. Such honesty has always been a hallmark of Stillman’s cinema, and even if Love & Friendship feels like more of a confection than his other films, that frankness, thankfully, still remains. —Kenji Fujishima
My Man Godfrey
Year: 1936
Director: Gregory La Cava
Stars: Carole Lombard, William Powell
Rating: 7+
Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey is kind of like a proto-Le Dîner de Cons—or Dinner for Schmucks—except that My Man Godfrey is really good and neither the latter nor the former film measure up to it. (Because Le Dîner de Cons is coarse, condescending trash, too.) La Cava’s inroads to skewering the upper crust is through the upper crust itself: The film takes its outsider protagonist, Godfrey “Smith” Parke (William Powell), who’s not an outsider at all but a man in exile from high society’s bosom, and inserts him into circumstances where he’s the sanest, sharpest man in the room. Rich people are wild. That’s the film’s subtext, or just its text, because Godfrey’s charges, the members of the family Bullock, are either completely out of their gourds or stuffed headfirst up their own asses. They’d have to be, perhaps, to mistake him for a vagrant when he’s actually a member of the elite class just like they are. They’d also have to be observant and considerably less self-absorbed to make these fine distinctions. La Cava has fun with the scenario, as does Powell, and as does the rest of the cast, in particular Carole Lombard, playing young Irene, who falls head over heels for Godfrey, blithely unconcerned with his disinterest, and Gail Patrick as the daffy Mrs. Bullock, full of unfettered, dizzying joy. Dizziness, of course, is a requirement. Films like My Man Godfrey, screwball joints that move at a laugh-a-minute pace, demand the exhaustion of their viewers, and La Cava wears us out as surely as he delights us. —Andy Crump
Midnight Run
Year: 1988
Director: Martin Brest
Stars: Robert De Niro, Charles Grodin, Yaphet Kotto, Dennis Farina, John Ashton
Rating: R
The ’80s created the textbook action/comedy formula, and director Martin Brest was smack dab in the middle of it. His Beverly Hills Cop was originally written as a straight action movie, until Eddie Murphy was cast in the lead role. Instead of keeping the overall self-serious tone of the film and just inserting some out-of-place comedy set pieces into the narrative, Murphy and Brest infused a lighthearted tone across the entire project, while keeping the basic requirements of an action structure in place. Midnight Run, Brest’s follow-up to Beverly Hills Cop, perfects this fusion. None of the action sequences take themselves too seriously, and none of comedy comes across as mugging, desperate to extract easy chuckles. The premise and structure are very simple and fairly predictable: It’s a traditional road movie wherein a grizzled bounty hunter (Robert DeNiro) has to transport a mob accountant (Charles Grodin) across the country, with the mob and the police squarely on their tail. What makes Midnight Run still feel fresh after 30 years is Brest’s aforementioned handle on tone, and the terrific chemistry between DeNiro and Grodin, so on point it’s surprising they weren’t reunited for other similar flicks after this. Usually the rough masculine bounty hunter would be the wild card against the accountant’s stuffy straight man, yet DeNiro and Grodin find refreshing ways of tinkering with that formula, with DeNiro’s character eventually coming across as a regular good guy who was dealt more than a few bad hands, and Grodin as a lovable but sometimes infuriating weirdo. —Oktay Ege Kozak
Rock ‘n’ Roll High School
Year: 1979
Director: Allan Arkush
Stars: P.J. Soles, Vincent Van Patten, Clint Howard, Mary Woronov, the Ramones
Rating: PG
This might be known as “that Ramones movie,” but it’s P.J. Soles’s show. As Riff Randell, the biggest Ramones fan at Vince Lombardi High, the Carrie and Halloween actress gives us one of the best on-screen depictions of what it means to be a passionate fan of anything, but especially rock ‘n’ roll. Riff’s enthusiasm is infectious and her love for the Ramones updates the archetype of the teenage girl swooning over ’50s and ’60s pop stars for the late ’70s, just as the Ramones revived bubblegum pop through the dirty lens of that rotting decade. You don’t have to like the Ramones to like this movie–you just have to like rebellion and rock ‘n’ roll and the wholesale destruction of confining institutions like the American high school.—Garrett Martin
Saint Ralph
Year: 2005
Director: Michael McGowan
Stars: Adam Butcher, Campbell Scott, Gordon Pinsent
Rating: PG-13
Saint Ralph is the story of Ralph Walker, a precocious Catholic schoolboy living in Canada in the early 1950s. Blessed with an Eddie Haskell eagerness and plagued by a cruel libido, he’s willing, at one point, to receive fellatio from a swimming-pool jet. But, when the 14 year-old’s mom slips into a coma, he decides to win the Boston Marathon, a miracle he hopes will wake her. Ralph falls short as a sports film, but it succeeds as a coming-of-age comedy. To see this boy bring a jar of dog feces to his mother’s hospital bed because “smell is one of the strongest memories,” and to see him blanch from shock at the possibility of actually having a consensual kiss, is much more poignant and charming than the many training montages. First-time writer/director Michael McGowan, the steadfast Campbell Scott as Father Hibbert, and magnetic newcomer Adam Butcher as Ralph create an endearing tale of woe and redemption, redeeming the melodrama.—Kennan Mayo
Some Like It Hot
Year: 1959
Director: Billy Wilder
Stars: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft, Joe E. Brown, Pat O’Brien
Rating: NR
Is Some Like It Hot one of Marilyn Monroe’s best films, or one of her most antithetical? Sugar Kane is, in a nutshell, the kind of character Marilyn struggled so hard to avoid playing for the bulk of her career: a ditzy blonde, a pure sex symbol, someone who exists in the context of the movie just to tickle the male gaze, whether within the story or without. She’s given nothing to work with, as the bulk of the film’s heavy lifting is accorded to Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon instead. Watching the film in 2017, you may wonder why Billy Wilder slacked on investing Sugar with any level of empathy, why he wrote the character as a one-dimensional object, a trophy for Lemmon and Curtis to compete over. You may also not wonder at all. Some Like It Hot works, even if Marilyn has little to work with other than her persona and her co-star; it’s funny, it’s quick on its feet, and it sells its central joke—that nobody, save for the audience, can see that Curtis and Lemmon are obviously dudes in drag—perfectly, layering just enough self-awareness of its own ridiculousness to keep the gag from going sour. —Andy Crump
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
Year: 2023
Director: Jeff Rowe, Kyler Spears (co-director)
Stars: Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Brady Noon, Nicolas Cantu, Jackie Chan, Ice Cube
Rating: PG
A visual tour de force of hybrid 2D and 3D animation, Mutant Mayhem is not only the most authentically New York version of the Turtles yet, it’s arguably the most inventive. Rowe, Spears and production designer Yashar Kassai have rendered the brothers as if they’re hand-drawn, complete with messy sketch lines, doodle flairs and a graffiti aesthetic. This is the ultimate paint-outside-the-lines take on the Turtles and it works on every level. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is swinging for the fences with its story and voice performances to ambitiously, quantifiably shake up the artistic rut that theatrical computer animation has been stuck in for the last two decades. Another plus is that the brothers are voiced by non-adult voice actors Nicolas Cantu (Leo), Brady Noon (Raph), Shamon Brown Jr. (Mikey) and Micah Abbey (Donnie), who recorded together, and were encouraged to excitedly talk over one another like a gaggle of real, tight-knit brothers would do. It translates into rapid-fire, organic quips and seemingly effortless timing that conveys a rapport that is singular to this iteration. It also elevates the script so that it doesn’t sound like it was written by a bunch of 40-year-olds trying to be hip and young. Rowe and Spears have a firm hold on their pacing, especially in how they use comedy to enhance their action beats. They also chart a progression to the brother’s battle prowess that is satisfying and pays off in satisfying full-circle moments. There’s also much to be admired in their choice to frame a lot of sequences with hand-held camera blocking, which leans into the unpredictable youth of the heroes that works so well in the gritty New York environs they’re sparring in. The filmmakers are also delightfully experimental throughout the Mutant Mayhem, using inspired live-action inserts, segueing into different artistic styles (including a homage to Eastman and Laird’s comic art) and embracing the asymmetrical character design that gives the film a fresh and energetic looseness. Rowe and company prove that there’s no strength to the myth of IP fatigue when you have the vision and passion to reinvent with such bold and fun intention.—Tara Bennett