comedies

In Wellington, wallflower Lily is inexplicably attracted to loser Jarrod. She's out of a job; he's nursing a decade-long grudge against someone who teased him in high school. When she accompanies him to his seacoast hometown where he intends to take on his nemesis, she meets his father, his daughter from a one-night stand, and other family members--plus the memory of his talented, dead brother. Jarrod treats Lily badly, invents a relationship with his dead brother's fiancée, and gears up for his fight. Will she finally have enough and go home?

When Steve Coogan is asked by The Observer to tour the country's finest restaurants, he envisions it as the perfect getaway with his beautiful girlfriend. But, when she backs out on him, he has no one to accompany him but his best friend and source of eternal aggravation, Rob Brydon.

Stephen has agoraphobia and, in the flat he won't leave, meticulously labels and stores everything from nail clippings to urine. In long flashbacks we see a trip to the continent he took with his only friend Bunny, an outgoing, inveterate gambler. The European trip is a bit dull (Stephen wants to visit every museum imaginable) until one night in Poland they meet Eloisa, a Spanish waitress, and offer to drive her home for her city's fiesta. We can guess that the trip won't end well - because Stephen is now stuck in his flat with occasional visits from Bunny - but will anything in the reverie move Stephen to action?

Dennis Dimbleby Bagley is a brilliant young advertising executive who can't come up with a slogan to sell a revolutionary new pimple cream. His obsessive worrying affects not only his relationship with his wife, his friends and his boss, but also his own body - graphically demonstrated when he grows a large stress-related boil on his shoulder. But when the boil grows eyes and a mouth and starts talking, Bagley really begins to think he's lost his mind. But has he?

Jack Lucas was once a famous, arrogant and egotistical New York City call-in radio talk show host. Largely self-inflicted due to remorse and grief, Jack goes on a quick downward spiral, both personally and professionally, after a glib comment he makes to one of his regular callers results in that caller going on a murder spree. Three years later, the only emotional and financial support a despondent Jack receives is from his current video store owning girlfriend, Anne. When Jack hits rock bottom, he meets a seemingly crazy and homeless man calling himself Parry. Parry does have mental health issues, namely hallucinations centered around the story of the Fisher King, which is why he has an obsession with obtaining the Holy Grail. When Jack learns of Parry's own background and the reason he got to where he is, Jack feels he needs to be part of Parry's salvation. He figures the way to do so is to connect Parry with Lydia Sinclair, a shy and uncoordinated woman who Parry loves from afar. In doing so, Jack may himself be able to recapture his old life back. But if he does, he may not realize that he was no saint in that former life.

London, 1969 - two 'resting' (unemployed and unemployable) actors, Withnail and Marwood, fed up with damp, cold, piles of washing-up, mad drug dealers and psychotic Irishmen, decide to leave their squalid Camden flat for an idyllic holiday in the countryside, courtesy of Withnail's uncle Monty's country cottage. But when they get there, it rains non-stop, there's no food, and their basic survival skills turn out to be somewhat limited. Matters are not helped by the arrival of Uncle Monty, who shows an uncomfortably keen interest in Marwood...

In the Midlands, two men and a boy are on losing streaks: Richard has a dead-end job, and his wife leaves him because he's inattentive and has a juvenile obsession for 11th-century battle reenactments. His best friend Julian still lives with mum and divides his obsessions between Vikings and Star Trek. Then there's Richard's son Martin, picked on at school in part because of his father's hobby. Richard vows to win back the heart of his ex, Julian may have met someone online who shares his interests, and Martin wants to stand up to bullies. All get bad advice, which they act on. Is there any hope for any of them?

Oil billionaire Happer sends Mac to a remote Scottish village to secure the property rights for an oil refinery they want to build. Mac teams up with Danny and starts the negotiations, the locals are keen to get their hands on the 'Silver Dollar' and can't believe their luck. However, a local hermit and beach scavenger, Ben Knox, lives in a shack on the crucial beach which he also owns. Happer is more interested in the Northern Lights and Danny in a surreal girl with webbed feet, Marina. Mac is used to a Houston office with fax machines but is forced to negotiate on Bens terms.

Two actors, as their make up is applied, talk about the size of their parts. Then into the film: Laurence Sterne's unfilmable novel, Tristram Shandy, a fictive autobiography wherein the narrator, interrupted constantly, takes the entire story to be born. The film tracks between "Shandy" and behind the scenes. Size matters: parts, egos, shoes, noses. The lead's girlfriend, with their infant son, is up from London for the night, wanting sex; interruptions are constant. Scenes are shot, re-shot, and discarded. The purpose of the project is elusive. Fathers and sons; men and women; cocks and bulls. Life is amorphous, too full and too rich to be captured in one narrative.

Two untalented singers are mistaken for a pair of major league safe crackers in Providence, Rhode Island. The two are pressed into service by the local hoodlums and quickly find themselves in conflict with their professional colleagues. Romantic interest is added by the daughter of the underworld leader who won't date the men she knows are gangsters.

Four Lions tells the story of a group of British jihadists who push their abstract dreams of glory to the breaking point. As the wheels fly off, and their competing ideologies clash, what emerges is an emotionally engaging (and entirely plausible) farce. In a storm of razor-sharp verbal jousting and large-scale set pieces, Four Lions is a comic tour de force; it shows that-while terrorism is about ideology-it can also be about idiots.

Benjamin, home-schooled by his eccentric mother, is a loner whose passion for writing leads him on an journey as his story first gets ripped off by the legendary fantasy novelist, Ronald Chevalier, and then is adapted into a disastrous movie by the small town's most prolific homespun filmmaker.

The US President and UK Prime Minister fancy a war. But not everyone agrees that war is a good thing. The US General Miller doesn't think so and neither does the British Secretary of State for International Development, Simon Foster. But, after Simon accidentally backs military action on TV, he suddenly has a lot of friends in Washington, DC. If Simon can get in with the right DC people, if his entourage of one can sleep with the right intern, and if they can both stop the Prime Minister's chief spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker rigging the vote at the UN, they can halt the war. If they don't... well, they can always sack their Director of Communications Judy, who they never liked anyway and who's back home dealing with voters with blocked drains and a man who's angry about a collapsing wall.

Intermission is an urban love story about people adrift and their convoluted journeys in the search for some kind of love. When the desperately insecure and emotionally inarticulate John breaks up with Deirdre to 'give her a little test' his plan backfires leaving her broken-hearted and him alone and miserable. Through chance and coincidence, their break-up triggers a roller coaster ride of interweaving escapades in the lives of everyone around them. Intermission presents a slice of life, the passage between breaking up and making up, exploring how our lives intersect, and the power we all possess to affect the lives of those around us.

Mark is a wannabe actor, penniless, clueless, and inept. He cares for a brother who's paraplegic, and he has a girlfriend, Sally, who wants out of the relationship. His idea of life is to go to the occasional audition, dodge his landlord (having spent the rent money Sally gave him), give Sally a hang-dog look, and talk with Pearce, who lives upstairs. Mark's flat is in disrepair: the kitchen window slams shut, bits of plaster fall from the ceiling, a bulb fizzes, and the sitting-room chandelier sways. When an awful accident happens, Mark freezes, which precipitates additional accidents; he finally calls Pearce, perhaps the worst decision possible. Will Mark come to his senses?

It's 1973 in Cemetery Junction, a Reading suburb. Three working class lads, best friends, are coming of age. Freddie wants to rise above his station, taking a job selling life insurance, wearing a suit and tie. Snork works at the railway station and wants a girlfriend some day. Bruce talks of leaving but seems on track to work at a factory, drink and fight, and become like his dad, in front of the telly with beer on hand; and he's trying the patience of the police officer who gets him out of jams. Freddie's job leads the lads toward a few small changes. He runs across a childhood friend, Julie, his boss's daughter who's engaged to the firm's top seller. Can the lads break out?

John and Dean Solomon may have Ph.D.s, but they're socially inept after their widowed father home-schooled them in Antarctica. When their beloved dad falls into a coma, they hatch a plan to revive him using a positive emotional shock - giving him a grandchild. They find a surrogate mom through Craig's list - she's Janine, a penniless local musician, with a large, intimidating boyfriend, James. The pregnancy gives the Solomons nine months to learn to be parents. In a side story, John pursues Tara, a neighbor who takes care of their dad when John and Dean are out; but she has no interest in John. Can the boys keep Janine and James happy, keep dad alive, and learn to be dads?

Based on the true story of the famous murderers, this movie follows the hapless exploits of William Burke (Simon Pegg) and William Hare (Andy Serkis) as they fall into the highly-profitable business of providing cadavers for the medical fraternity in 19th-century Edinburgh, Scotland, then the center of medical learning. The one thing they were short of was bodies.