dark comedy

HUMAN RESOURCES: Iago with a sick sense of humor

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Pedro De Tavira (center) in HUMAN RESOURCES. Courtesy of Cinequest.

In the dark, dark Argentinian comedy Human Resources, Gabriel Lynch (Pedro De Tavira) is an alienated office worker, in an absurdly alienating workplace. Gabriel is a low-level supervisor on an anonymous lower floor of a corporate hive with too many layers of management and an oppressive, top-down culture. It’s also oversexed, with a carousel of Inappropriate office liaisons. And, we’ll soon see, is shockingly tolerant of what we would see as the most horrifying workplace violence.

Gabriel, an Iago with a sick sense of humor, begins a ruthless, unhinged campaign against those who offend him. Alienation leaks out in how her treats everyone. Mischievous, mean-spirited and completely unashamed, he’s very fun to watch. And, as venal as Gabriel is, he is matched, step-for-step, by Veronica from Finance (Juana Viale).

Around the 41-minute mark, Gabriel makes his grievance explicit (followed by a great drone shot)

“I’ve lived like the secret son of a king for a long time, waiting for a courtier to rescue me. Of course, nobody rescued me. Nobody rescues anybody.”

Human Resources is the creation of writer-director Jesús Magaña Vázquez. I’ve rarely seen a more cynical comedy.

Last year’s Cinequest hosted the US premiere of Human Resources, which I highlighted in my Best of Cinequest. Human Resources is now streaming on Hulu. There are many recent movies with a similar title; make sure you’re watching the 2023 Recursos Humanos directed by Magana and starring Pedro De Tavira.

I love the Spanish language trailer, even without English subtitles:

NO OTHER CHOICE: keeping up with the Parks

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Photo caption: Lee Byung-hun in NO OTHER CHOICE. Courtesy of NEON.

In the brilliantly dark comedy No Other Choice, master filmmaker Park Chan-wook serves up social satire in delicious perversity. Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) and his family live a privileged life, financed by his job as a manager in a paper mill. But he loses his job, putting the big house, the tennis club, the cello lessons, and the all rest at risk. Man-su looks for another job – but there are other candidates. Man-su decides to eliminate the competition by murdering the other guys.

Remember that Man-su is a paper mill manager, not a skilled hit man, so his efforts to murder guys, dispose of their bodies and keep it all secret from the police and his family are very funny. His wife Miri (Son Yejin) is not exactly Lady Macbeth, but, when she catches a whiff of what is going on, she demonstrates some moral flexibility.

The recent great Korean satire Parasite was about the desperation of the disadvantaged in a society exploited by the rich. No Other Choice is about the desperation of the affluent to hang on to their material comforts and amenities. Man-su could, of course, choose to downsize his family’s lifestyle instead of becoming a serial killer.

No Other Choice works because, Park Chan-wook is fully committed to his pretty simple, but transgressive, premise and because he is a superb storyteller, just like in his stellar Decision to Leave and The Handmaiden. Of course, No Other Choice is also a pointed scritique of materialism and status-seeking, particularly in Korea, but also in the rest of the capitalist world.

No Other Choice is one of the Best Movies of 2025, and it opens widely this weekend.

HONEY DON’T: kinda funny, disposable

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Photo caption: Margaret Qualley in HONEY DON’T. Courtesy of Focus Features.

In Ethan Coen’s dark comedy Honey Don’t, the potential clients of private eye Honey O’Donahue (Margaret Qualley) keep getting killed, and she suspects that the deaths are connected to a sexually predatory sham preacher (Chris Evans). She’s a whip-smart lipstick lesbian, and she sizzles with the local cop MG (Aubrey Plaza). Honey and the phony pastor have lots of robust sex, none of it with each other. We think we know who the big villain is going to be, but there’s a big surprise twist.

There’s a lot of sassy dialogue, and there are some LOL lines like “no, but I saw Palmdale” that could have become iconic if this were a better movie. It’s kinda funny, dotted with a few inspired moments, but, on the whole, a disposable movie.

Director Ethan Coen co-wrote Honey Don’t with longtime Coen Brothers editor Tricia Cooke, who also co-wrote his Drive Away Dolls. In a twist on the detective genre, the oversexed, badass characters are women – Honey, MG and a mysterious, motor scooter-riding drug importer (Lera Abova). The two main male characters are Evan’s predatory minister, a doofus who thinks he’s a mastermind, and a smarmy cop (Charlie Day), who knows that he’s a doofus and is blissfully content with being one. That being said, Honey Don’t is all about the carnage-laden comic violence that men tend to enjoy, and I doubt that the female-centric angle is enough to draw women into the audience.

Qualley and Evans are both very good, and I will watch anything that features Aubrey Plaza. There are excellent comic performances by Josh Pafchek, as an impressively dim thug, and Kale Browne, as an old man whose identity isn’t revealed right away.

One of the most distinctive and fun stars of the film is its setting – emphatically downscale Bakersfield. I’m not convinced that there is a nice part of Bakersfield, but, if there is, we sure don’t see it here. Californians will also enjoy the references to Lancaster and Palmdale.

Honey Don’t is a mildly enjoyable 87 minutes, but not a Must See.

OH, HI!: romantic disappointment becomes absurdly unhinged

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Photo caption: Logan Lerman as Isaac and Molly Gordon as Iris in OH, HI!. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

The dark romantic comedy Oh, Hi! begins with Iris (Molly Gordon of Booksmart, Theater Camp, The Bear) and Isaac (Logan Lerman of The Perks of Being a Wallflower) heading off to a countryside vacation rental for their first romantic getaway. All is lustful fun until they discover that each has a different perception of what their relationship is and where it is headed. What could have been a merely awkward or hurtful moment precipitates an extreme reaction, and escalates into an absurdly funny situation.

Oh, Hi! is the sophomore feature for writer-director Sophie Brooks. Commitment-averse guys and overthinking gals are common fodder for rom com humor, but Brooks is sharply observant about relationships tending to evolve at different speeds for the participants. Although she has created a broadly funny, over-the-top situation, much of the comedy is character-driven. Brooks has mined the first act and later flashbacks with clever hints about each character’s level of commitment to the relationship and their emotional stability. It’s a smart screenplay.

The success of Oh, Hi! depends on Molly Gordon’s fine performance as a woman whose increasingly unhinged and transgressive behavior is vulnerability-based. Logan Lerman is very good as a guy thinking his way through through a surreal experience with complete helplessness.

Polly Draper (Thirtysomething) is very funny as Iris’ mother, dispensing supportive yet unhelpful advice. Josh Reynolds is hilarious as an uxorious goof who has become entangled in a No Win state of affairs.

I screened Oh, Hi!, which premiered at this year’s Sundance, for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. It releases in theaters this weekend.

CHEVALIER – male competitiveness, brilliantly skewered

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CHEVALIER. Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing and SFFILM.

To celebrate this week’s opening of SFFILM, here’s a gem from the 2016 SFFILM, Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Chevalier, a sly and pointed exploration of male competitiveness, with the moments of drollness and absurdity that we expect in the best of contemporary Greek cinema. Tsangari is bringing her newest film Harvest, starring Caleb Landry Jones and Harry Melling, to to the 2025 SFFILM.

In Chevalier, six guys are taking a holiday week on a yacht in the Aegean Sea. Each has his own stateroom, and the crew includes a chef. They spend their days scuba diving, jet skiing and the like. After a post-dinner game of charades, one suggests that they play Chevalier, a game about “Who is best overall?”. Of course, men tend to be competitive, and their egos are now at stake. The six guys began appraising each other, and their criteria get more and more absurd. “How many fillings do you have?”

In one especially inspired set piece, the guys race each other to construct IKEA bookcases, which results in five phallic towers on the boat’s deck (and one drooping failure). Naturally, some of the guys are obsessed with their own erections, too.

Athina Rachel Tsangari, director of CHEVALIER . Photo courtesy of SFFILM.

Director Athina Rachel Tsangari is obviously a keen observer of male behavior. Both men and women will enjoy laughing at male behavior taken to extreme. I sure did. Chevalier is perhaps the funniest movie of 2016, and it’s on my list of Best Movies of 2016.

I saw Chevalier at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM), where I pegged it as the Must See of the fest. (In 2011, Tsangari brought her hilariously offbeat Attenberg to SFFILM.)

Make sure you get the 2015 Greek Chevalier, not the 2023 Hollywood bodice-ripper.

Unfortunately, in the Bay Area, Chevalier only got a blink-and-you’ve-missed-it release in 2016. Chevalier is now available to stream from Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.

FOUL EVIL DEEDS: from not so bad to worse

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Photo caption: Alexander Perkins in Richard Hunter’s FOUL EVIL DEEDS. Courtesy of Slamdance.

The deadpan anthology FOUL EVIL DEEDS depicts a range of aberrant human behavior, most of it darkly funny. The deeds themselves arise from a wide variety of root causes:

  • a couple’s social clumsiness;
  • a loner’s inner rage;
  • some kids’ youthful stupidity;
  • one guy’s uncommon sexual need;
  • an otherwise upstanding dog-walker’s entitlement;
  • and one man filled with deep-seated, sociopathic evil.

The threads are woven together into a wry, clever and very cynical movie that veers to the misanthropic. The segment about a neighbor’s cat could have been written by Larry David about George Costanza.

Writer-director Richard Hunter’s debut feature is consciously an art film; Hunter says he is influenced by the work of Ulrich Seidl, Michael Haneke and Roy Andersson, and it shows. It’s a slow burn, and the audience wonders, why is that guy checking out the remote wooded wetland? (Hint: he’s looking to coverup a future evil deed.)

Hunter seems to be measuring human behavior by its impact on others. Some might still consider an unconventional sexual practice to be a “sin”, but it’s entirely victimless (and isn’t even illegal). In another thread, what is intended as a harmless practical joke becomes tragic.

Alexander Perkins is excellent as a man with anger management issues that he can’t shake. As a consequence, he is grinding his teeth through workaday drudgery, and he’s mad about that, too. Does he have a path out of his situation, or he just going to stew until he explodes? There’s only one person who he can talk to (Oengus MacNamara in an unexpectedly riveting performance).

I think that FOUL EVIL DEEDS is likely to secure US arthouse distribution. FOUL EVIL DEEDS It premiered at Locarno, and I screened FOUL EVIL DEEDS for its North American premiere at Slamdance.

Through March 7, 2025, you can stream FOUL EVIL DEEEDS on the Slamdance Slamdance Channel. A 2025 Slamdance Film Festival Virtual Pass, which brings you FOUL EVIL DEEDS and almost all of my Slamdance recommendations, only costs $50.

SAME OLD WEST: where men are men but aren’t great shots

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A scene from Erico Rassi’s SAME OLD WEST. Courtesy of Cinequest.

The contemporary Brazilian western Same Old West begins with two men slugging it out over a woman, before they start hiring gunmen to take out the other. She is the only woman in the film, only on screen for about 45 seconds, and, as one who knows her well observes, she has had bad luck with husbands.

Same Old West takes us into a Brazil that is neither Rio de Janeiro nor the Amazon rainforest. This is a flat and arid land that looks like it could be in Spain, Mexico or the American Southwest.  It’s a remote and backward place where hired killers are still call gunmen instead of hit men. The gunmen don’t own a .44 magnum or a Glock or an AK-47 among them – they use their hunting rifles. This is a place where making an escape on horseback is still absolutely normal.

Literally, the plot of Same Old West sounds male-oriented – a bunch of guys hunting each other with gun violence on their minds. But, it’s really about men who have been rejected by women, and their inability to understand it or to move on. They’re aspiring to toxic masculinity, but they’re too laughably pathetic to achieve it. Female audiences will appreciate the sharp critique of maleness at its most dunderheaded.

Same Old West is being characterized as a drama, which isn’t really wrong because it’s about murderous manhunts. But I see it as a dark comedy that skewers male cluelessness. The very sparse and overly formal dialogue, delivered deadpan, is remarkably droll. If you like your humor as dry as the landscape, Same Old West is downright hilarious. 

Same Old West is the second feature for writer-director Erico Rassi. It’s a visually striking and richly atmospheric film, with hints of Sergio Leone.

Cinequest hosts the world premiere of Same Old West, which I’ve highlighted in my Best of Cinequest.

A scene from Erico Rassi’s SAME OLD WEST. Courtesy of Cinequest.

HUMAN RESOURCES: Iago with a sick sense of humor

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Pedro De Tavira (center) in HUMAN RESOURCES. Courtesy of Cinequest.

In the dark, dark Argentinian comedy Human Resources, Gabriel Lynch (Pedro De Tavira) is an alienated office worker, in an absurdly alienating workplace. Gabriel is a low-level supervisor on an anonymous lower floor of a corporate hive with too many layers of management and an oppressive, top-down culture. It’s also oversexed, with a carousel of Inappropriate office liaisons. And, we’ll soon see, is shockingly tolerant of what we would see as the most horrifying workplace violence.

Gabriel, an Iago with a sick sense of humor, begins a ruthless, unhinged campaign against those who offend him. Alienation leaks out in how her treats everyone. Mischievous, mean-spirited and completely unashamed, he’s very fun to watch. And, as venal as Gabriel is, he is matched, step-for-step, by Veronica from Finance (Juana Viale).

Around the 41-minute mark, Gabriel makes his grievance explicit (followed by a great drone shot)

“I’ve lived like the secret son of a king for a long time, waiting for a courtier to rescue me. Of course, nobody rescued me. Nobody rescues anybody.”

Human Resources is the creation of writer-director Jesús Magaña Vázquez. I’ve rarely seen a more cynical comedy.

Cinequest hosts the US premiere of Human Resources, which I highlighted in my Best of Cinequest.

I love the Spanish language trailer, even without English subtitles:

KILLER JOE: you sure ain’t gonna be bored

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OK, this is NOT FOR EVERYONE.  Here’s a movie that will either thrill or disgust you. Either way, you sure ain’t gonna be bored.

It’s William Friedkin Week at The Movie Gourmet, and we’re looking at three of the director’s more overlooked films. We’ve covered the neo-noir thriller To Live and to Die in L.A., and the psychological horror movie Bug. Today’s Friedkin classic is another neo-noir, that paragon of perversity, Killer Joe

In Killer Joe, Thomas Haden Church, Gina Gershon and Emile Hirsch play a white trash family with a get-rich-quick scheme.  They give a hit man (Matthew McConaughey) the teen daughter (Juno Temple) as a deposit.  They’re all as dumb as a bag of hammers, so what could go wrong?

Killer Joe was directed by William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) and shot by cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (The Right Stuff, The Natural) in just 20 days.  These guys know how to tell a story, and Killer Joe pops and crackles.

Emile Hirsch, Gina Gershon, Thomas Haden Church and Juno Temple in KILLER JOE. Photo credit: KillerJoeTheMovie.com.

Killer Joe is rated NC-17 for good reason and Friedkin accepts the rating without complaint.  Indeed, Killer Joe has its share of Sam Peckinpah-style screen violence and an unsettling deflowering scene.  But the piece de resistance is an over-the-top sadistic encounter between McConaughey and Gershon involving a chicken drumstick,  at once disturbing and darkly hilarious.   But Sam Fuller and Quentin Tarantino would have loved it, and so did I.  Nevertheless, some viewers will feel like they need a shower after this movie.

Matthew McConaughey in KILLER JOE. Photo credit: KillerJoeTheMovie.com.

The cast does a good job, but the picture really belongs to McConaughey and Temple.  McConaughey was recalibrating his career a la Alec Baldwin – he had just started his move from playing pretty boys in the rom-coms to taking meatier, more interesting roles.  He is both funny and menacing as Killer Joe (and I liked him in Bernie and Magic Mike, too).  Killer Joe preceded his roles in Mud, The Dallas Buyers Club, True Detective  and The Free State of Jones.

The movie slowly makes Juno Temple’s character more and more central, until she takes command of the denouement.  Temple is always sexy (Kaboom and Dirty Girl), and here she is able to ratchet down her intelligence to play a very simple character, always exploited by others, who is finally empowered to take control.

I saw Killer Joe at a screening where Friedkin said that the screenwriter (famed playwright Tracy Letts) saw Juno Temple’s character as the receptacle for all feminine rage.  Friedkin himself sees it as a Cinderella story – just one where Cinderella’s Prince Charming is a professional killer.  That’s all pretty deep sledding to me – I see Killer Joe as a very dark and violent comedy – kinda like In Bruges with twisted sex.

Killer Joe is available to stream from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Hulu.

RED ROCKET: a genius at burning bridges

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Photo caption: Simon Rex in RED ROCKET. Courtesy of A24.

The dark comedy Red Rocket is Sean Baker’s portrait of a human trainwreck named Mikey. Mikey is introduced when he steps off a bus, with no luggage and bearing the wounds of a fistfight he has lost, returning to his hometown of Texas City, Texas, after 17 years in Los Angeles. When he re-introduces himself to the locals, he is invariably met with an unhappy “What are you doing here?“. He is there because he is no longer viable as a porn star, and he has burned every available bridge in Southern California.

A fast talker with a gift for gab and flexibility with facts, Mikey begs for shelter from his estranged wife Lexy and her mom Lil; they greet Mikey with well-earned wariness. Mikey is one of those people who churn through life leaving a trail of relationship carnage. He’s always on the lookout for some opportunity for someone else to get him something he wants, regardless of the cost to the other person.

Mikey basically has the worldview of a pimp, and the plot in Red Rocket is basically whether he hurl himself into well-deserved self-destruction before he can damage folks who don’t deserve it, including Lexy, Lil, his dim-witted neighbor Lonnie and the underage target of his affections, Strawberry.

Mikey is a scumbag, and Red Rocket only works as entertainment because Simon Rex (who has worked in porn himself) is very good as the loquacious and pathetically self-absorbed Mikey.

Sean Baker’s trademark is making excellent movies (Tangerine, The Florida Project) with non-actors. Here, Bree Elrod (Lexy) and Suzanna Son (Strawberry) have some professional experience. Shih-Ching Tsou (Miss Phan the doughnut shop proprietor) is a longtime Sean Baker collaborator who has been a producer of his previous films and has bit parts in them.

The rest of the cast are first-timers. Brenda Deiss is perfect as Lil, and she doesn’t look or behave like any professional from Hollywood. Brittney Rodriguez is very funny as the tough-as-nails enforcer of a family dope ring, and she is compelling enough on screen to find a pace in other movies.

Baker makes Texas City into a character in his story. In virtually every exterior shot, the smokestacks of petrochemical plants are visible. (And it helps to know that Texas City is about a 35 to 40 hour $200 bus ride to and from LA.) Pickup trucks are very popular, but Mike has to make do with a bicycle.

Sean Baker is the writer, director and producer of Red Rocket and, unfortunately, its editor – it’s 20 minutes too long. Red Rocket is not nearly as good as Baker’s best – Tangerine and The Florida Project, but it’s pretty good.