Movies in the Drama/Comedy genre

Nostalgia can be a wonderful thing, especially when a director tweaks it and plays with it. With Nebraska, Alexander Payne, working from a screenplay credited to Bob Nelson, targets a very specific slice of Americana that has often been romanticize...

Watching Never Goin’ Back, I wasn’t sure whether this was intended to be a slice-of-life comedy, a coming of age drama, or a horror film. Since the first two don’t really apply – it’s not nearly as funny as it thinks it is and the ch...

For Nouvelle Vague, director Richard Linklater offers a three-for-one. It’s a hangout movie, a love letter to the French New Wave, and a behind-the-scenes look at one of the era’s most famous films: Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. Stylisti...

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the “ninth film from Quentin Tarantino,” might be too long and a little self-indulgent. But it’s also chock-full of brilliant moments, great performances, and a sense of ’60s Hollywood infused with a mix ...

Our Brand is Crisis is about an election but in many ways it plays out like a boxing movie told from the perspective of the trainer. The cynical, satirical edge is entirely appropriate for the world of politics in which style trumps substance and the...

Outside Providence is a simple coming of age story, a nostalgia-soaked trip back to the mid-'70s when the social fabric of the American youth was stitched together by sex, drugs, and rock music. The film, despite never venturing into uncharted ter...

Sally Potter’s quirky The Party owes a lot to a generation’s worth of French “gathering” films in which a bunch of characters come together for dinner (or something similar) and all hell breaks loose. Commonalities among these films in...

What is the difference between a bad melodrama and a good one? The key lies in the emotional response. If the viewer feels that he or she is being forced into reacting in a particular way because of "button pushing," the film makers have erred. ...

As long as there will be movies, new adaptations of beloved classics will follow. The important aspect for every director to remember is to find a unique angle – a change in tone, a different slant to the narrative, a shift in setting, etc. ...

Despite arriving on North American screens mid-way through the month of November with a cast that features three previous Academy Award nominees (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson) and a similarly honored writer/director (Richa...