Funny People, the latest film by writer/director Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin) has been advertised as being a comedy, when in fact it is more of a dramedy, which happens to contain many moments of true hilarity. It is Apatow’s most mature film to date (this in spite of the director’s need to talk about penises every 2.5 minutes in each of his films), and certainly the most mature work Sandler (Big Daddy, You Don’t Mess With The Zohan) has ever done in his life. While it’s not proof that either man will ever truly grow up, it’s a testament to the fact that both are maturing in their approach to the material they work on.
Sandler plays George Simmons, an amazingly successful former standup comedian-turned-actor, who has sold out his principles for a big mansion and a hefty cut of his movies’ box office grosses. He’s still good to his fans though, stopping to pose for pictures and crack jokes in order to make sure they crack a smile. However when George gets some tests back from his doctor, stating that he has an extremely rare blood disease and his chances are grim bordering on hopeless, he begins the slow path through self-absorbed grief to introspection and ultimately makes an earnest attempt to right the wrongs of his life.
At a comedy club one night, George happens to cross paths with Ira Wright (Seth Rogen, who also served as an executive producer on the film), a barely funny funnyman whose own friends at work and his roommates at home continually tell him how unamusing he is. Perhaps it’s the fact that Ira’s giving his all that one night, or George is too lost in his own self-pity to notice fully, but some of Ira’s material strikes a chord with him as having promise, and George hires Ira to write jokes for him. (more…)
Barton Fink (1991). The Coen brothers’ take on writer’s block and peeling wallpaper won Best Director (Joel Coen), Best Actor (John Turturro), and the grand prize — the Palme d’Or — at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. John Turturro plays a New York playwright hired to write screenplays in 1940s Hollywood. While struggling to write a wrestling picture, the studio puts him up in a run-down hotel where he meets his next-door neighbor, an insurance salesman played by John Goodman. And then, in that typical Coen brothers way, it gets deliciously weird.
Brazil (1985). Think of it as George Orwell meets … well, Terry Gilliam. The director’s take on an Orwellian bureaucracy almost never got released in the U.S. The story is the stuff of Hollywood legend: Universal said the picture was unreleasable. They wanted to completely recut it and change the concept of the entire ending, so Terry Gilliam conducted private screenings against the studio’s wishes. Members of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association attended one of the screenings and voted Brazil best film of the year. Universal then relented and gave it a theatrical release, albeit reluctantly. But beware — the abbreviated, 94-minute cut of Brazil is sometimes shown in syndication, so if you’ve only seen it on TV, chances are you’ve seen the screwed-up version.
Bedtime Stories (2009, Disney) purchase from Amazon: 
