The best films for a group don't flatten the experience - they create one. You want something that generates opinions, debates, a reason to stay up later than planned.
The 2000s produced a remarkable run of intelligent, ambitious cinema - a decade that took genre seriously and rewarded patient audiences.
Great comedy is harder than drama. The timing has to be precise, the characters have to be real, and the laughs have to be earned rather than demanded.
Harold Crick is a lonely IRS agent whose mundane existence is transformed when he hears a mysterious voice narrating his life.
When Scooby and the gang get trapped in a video game created for the gang, they must fight against the 'Phantom Virus.' To escape the game they must go level by level and defeat the game once and for all.
The discovery that she has a terminal illness prompts introverted department store saleswoman Georgia Byrd to reflect on what she realizes has been an overly cautious life. With weeks to live, she withdraws her life savings, sells all her possessions and jets off to Europe where she lives it up at a posh hotel. Upbeat and passionate, Georgia charms everybody she meets, including renowned Chef Didier. The only one missing from her new life is her longtime crush Sean Williams.
Two co-dependent high school seniors are forced to deal with separation anxiety after their plan to stage a booze-soaked party goes awry.
Columbus has made a habit of running from what scares him. Tallahassee doesn't have fears. If he did, he'd kick their ever-living ass. In a world overrun by zombies, these two are perfectly evolved survivors. But now, they're about to stare down the most terrifying prospect of all: each other.
The comedies that age well are the ones built on character. Jokes change. Human behaviour doesn't. These films are about people, not punchlines.
A young Jewish American man endeavors-with the help of eccentric, distant relatives-to find the woman who saved his grandfather during World War II-in a Ukrainian village which was ultimately razed by the Nazis.
Stowing away after a failed con, a pair of swindlers end up on El Dorado, the fabled "city of gold", where they quickly get in over their heads when they are mistaken as gods by the inhabitants.
With one coin to make a wish at the piazza fountain, a peasant girl encounters two competing street performers who'd prefer the coin find its way into their tip jars. The little girl, Tippy, is caught in the middle as a musical duel ensues between the one-man-bands.
As adults, best friends Julien and Sophie continue the odd game they started as children -- a fearless competition to outdo one another with daring and outrageous stunts. While they often act out to relieve one another's pain, their game might be a way to avoid the fact that they are truly meant for one another.
A former world-famous conductor of the Bolshoï orchestra, known as "The Maëstro", Andreï Filipov had seen his career publicly broken by Leonid Brezhnev for hiring Jewish musicians and now works cleaning the concert hall where he once directed. One day, he intercepts an official invitation from the prestigious Théâtre du Châtelet. Through a series of mad antics, he reunites his old orchestra, now composed of old alcoholic musicians, and flies to perform in Paris and complete the Tchaikovsky concerto interrupted 30 years earlier. For the concerto, he engages a young violin soloist with whom he has an unexpected connection.
Overlooked films are overlooked for the wrong reasons. Not because they failed - because they didn't fit. These didn't fit. They're excellent.
A great comedy earns its place in memory not through jokes but through character. The funniest moments are the ones that are also somehow true.