Pedro Almodovar broke onto the international scene with this vibrant sex farce, which whirls about like a brightly painted spinning top. With its skewed camera angles, brash colors and outrageous characters, the movie is as much a live-action cartoon as its fellow 1988 release, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Women gets off to a slow start,

Dennis Quaid stars as Dan Foreman, an ad salesman whose new, 26-year-old boss (Topher Grace) takes an interest in his daughter (Scarlett Johansson). This may sound like a wacky farce, but the sly twist of this knowing comedy from director Paul Weitz (About a Boy) is the way Dan’s practical, workmanlike personality guides him through

Historical drama becomes the stuff of farce in this breezy, cheeky ensemble piece set during the Nazi occupation of France. Gregori Derangere headlines the cast as a young writer whose devotion to a conniving actress (Isabelle Adjani) gets him into trouble with the French police, then the Nazis and eventually lands him in the middle

Human Nature is only funny if you’re willing to see human nature as funny – in other words, if you’re willing to poke fun of yourself. A bizarre comedy that spoofs the clash between our animal instincts and our refined social order, the movie follows a love triangle involving a sweet young woman (Patricia Arquette)

Envy, about best friends (Ben Stiller and Jack Black) torn apart when one becomes rich, is like one of those cliffhanger rides at an amusement park: It starts out nice and smooth, then the bottom drops out. The movie’s release date was repeatedly delayed, and it seems to have seen the light of day not

When Barbershop broke out as an unexpected hit in 2002, it was one of those rare movie successes with the defining trait of modesty. Modesty is an even rarer quality in sequels, but Barbershop 2 miraculously retains its predecessor’s unassuming air. As the movie once again follows the loud, passionate conversations in a South Side

A comic satirist in the tradition of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, French director-star Jacques Tati created his most ambitious playground with Playtime. One reason Tati chose to shoot in 70mm – a widescreen format whose larger film frames allow for a brighter picture and sharper focus – was to be able to fully capture

Writer-director Blake Edwards and star Peter Sellers followed up 1963’s The Pink Panther with this much more tightly focused farce. This time Sellers’ inept Inspector Clouseau is the star – he seems to have come to the picture with a specific character in mind rather than a collection of slapstick shtick. The bumbling and fumbling