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The Marx Brothers in Horse Feathers and Duck Soup

Doesn’t anyone want to laugh anymore? I know it can’t be just me who yearns for the experience of sitting with a group of people I don’t know and sharing an evening of chuckles, chortles, snickers, titters, giggles and the occasional big fat belly laugh. But of all the ways that Hollywood has let us down in the 21st century, this has to be the biggest: where are all the comedies? Look at the movie listings and there are words you’ll see over and over again: horror, suspense, thriller, action, adventure, sci-fi, once in awhile drama or documentary.

Film review: Tango Shalom

America’s long-cherished status as a cultural melting pot is at the center of Tango Shalom, a likeable comedy whose message about religious tolerance more than makes up for its occasional failings.

Jos Laniado stars as Moshe Yehuda, a Hasidic Rabbi in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The school where he teaches is on the verge of closing unless he can come up with a big cash infusion.

film review: IN ACTION

Sean Kenealy and Eric Silvera are not the first (and likely not the last) aspiring filmmakers who faced the question, How can we make our first movie with no money? That question is usually answered by taking a dialogue heavy script and shooting it with whatever resources are at hand.

Film review: Love & Debt

Cheerfully old-fashioned, Love & Debt is a dramedy about an economically stressed family whose gentle tone signals from the outset that it does not plan to send the viewer through an emotional wringer. What it lacks in hard-hitting drama it makes up for in geniality.

FIlm review: IN BRIGHT AXIOM

The title of Spencer McCall’s new documentary may catch the eyes of some potential viewers curious to learn what it means. It might also drive away those who need a more direct hook when scanning a list of movies to stream. As such it bespeaks a hesitance to give away the full contours of McCall’s story that makes viewing the film an often frustrating experience.

Safe at home: The Third Strike

The Third Strike is a good documentary about a great subject, the perversion of federal mandatory sentencing laws, commonly known as “three strikes.” Instituted to keep the worst of the worst off the streets, they were intended to apply to criminals who had been convicted of three crimes, at least two of which were “serious violent felon[ies].” Over the decades they have been used to give life sentences to offend

Class Report: Human Capital

Most of us first heard the term “human capital” in discussions of financial settlements made to the families of those killed in the 9-11 attacks. It’s a bland term for a painful calculation, the monetary value of a life. The family of a victim who had high earning expectations would receive more from insurance companies than the family of, say, a janitor. It’s a controversial subject because it attempts to quantify something unquantifiable, and because it forces us to admit that, in the supposedly classless United States, some lives are “worth” more than others.

Cat weekend at the North Park Theatre

Several minutes of cats frolicking playfully on a semi-rural island are followed by an old man happily waking to find his pet cat Tama sleeping on his chest. Any canine chauvinist who may accidentally have wandered into the theater is put on immediate notice that The Island of Cats is unlikely to be the movie for them. Feline fanciers, on the other hand, can settle back for 100+ minutes of a story that will do little to distract them from contemplating the rewards of cat companionship.

film review: BUFFALOED

“I hope you guys enjoy this film, and I really hope you don’t wanna murder me afterward,” said writer/producer Brian Sacca by way of introducing Buffaloed when it played at the Buffalo International Film Festival a few months ago.

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