Directed by Bruce Robinson • 1986 • United Kingdom
Starring Paul McGann, Richard E. Grant, Richard Griffiths

London. The 1960s. Two unemployed actors—acerbic, elegantly wasted Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and the anxiety-ridden “I” (Paul McGann)—drown their frustrations in booze, pills, and light...

Directed by Charles Chaplin • 1936 • United States
Starring Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman

MODERN TIMES, Charlie Chaplin’s last outing as the Little Tramp, puts the iconic character to work as a giddily inept factory employee who becomes smitten with a gorgeous gamine (Paulette...

Directed by Ronald Neame • 1980 • United States
Starring Walter Matthau, Glenda Jackson, Sam Waterston

The inimitable comic team of Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson star in this nimble tale of international intrigue from master British filmmaker Ronald Neame. Based on Brian Garfield’s best-sell...

Directed by Peter Medak • 1972 • United Kingdom
Starring Peter O'Toole, Alastair Sim, Arthur Lowe

Peter O’Toole gives a tour-de-force performance as Jack, a man “cured” of believing he’s God—only to become Jack the Ripper incarnate. Based on Peter Barnes's irreverent play, this darkly comic indi...

Directed by Jacques Tati • 1953 • France
Starring Jacques Tati, Nathalie Pascaud

Monsieur Hulot, Jacques Tati’s endearing clown, takes a holiday at a seaside resort, where his presence provokes one catastrophe after another. Tati’s masterpiece of gentle slapstick is a series of effortlessly well...

Directed by Louis Malle • 1960 • France
Starring Catherine Demongeot, Philippe Noiret

A brash and precocious ten-year-old (Catherine Demongeot) comes to Paris for a whirlwind weekend with her rakish uncle (Philippe Noiret); he and the viewer get more than they bargained for, however, in this ana...

Directed by Pietro Germi • 1961 • Italy
Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Stefania Sandrelli, Daniela Rocca

Baron Ferdinando Cefalù (Marcello Mastroianni) longs to marry his nubile young cousin Angela (Stefania Sandrelli), but one obstacle stands in his way: his fatuous and fawning wife, Rosalia (D...

Directed by Juzo Itami • 1987 • Japan
Starring Nobuko Miyamoto, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Masahiko Tsugawa

Certainly the most exuberantly entertaining film ever made about the intricacies of the Japanese tax system, this delightful comedy stars Nobuko Miyamoto as a fiercely dedicated tax collector who g...

Directed by Luis García Berlanga • 1963 • Italy, Spain
Starring Nino Manfredi, Emma Penella, José Isbert

This masterpiece of black humor, beloved in Spain but too little seen elsewhere, threads a scathing critique of Franco-era values through a macabre farce about an undertaker who marries an ex...

Directed by Charles Chaplin • 1952 • United States
Starring Charles Chaplin, Claire Bloom

Charlie Chaplin’s masterful drama about the twilight of a former vaudeville star is among the writer-director’s most touching films. Chaplin plays Calvero, a once beloved musical-comedy performer, now a was...

Directed by Sammo Hung • 1985 • Hong Kong
Starring Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao

Longtime friends Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Biao—who had worked together since childhood as part of a Beijing opera troupe—join forces for this rollicking blend of action thrills and lunatic humor, which...

Directed by Mario Monicelli • 1958 • Italy
Starring Vittorio Gassman, Renato Salvatori, Memmo Carotenuto

An all-star cast and jazzy score highlight this charming comedy, a deft satire of classic caper films like RIFIFI. BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET hilariously details the plight of a sad-sack grou...

Directed by Juzo Itami • 1996 • Japan
Starring Masahiko Tsugawa, Nobuko Miyamoto, Ryunosuke Kaneda

In this vibrant comedy, failing supermarket manager Goro (Masahiko Tsugawa) hires Hanako (Nobuko Miyamoto), an old classmate, to help him compete with the new rival grocery store in town. Soon, Han...

Directed by Charles Chaplin • 1947 • United States
Starring Charles Chaplin, Mady Correll

Charlie Chaplin plays shockingly against type in his most controversial film, a brilliant and bleak black comedy about money, marriage, and murder. Chaplin is a twentieth-century bluebeard, an enigmatic fam...

Directed by Anthony Asquith • 1952 • United Kingdom
Starring Michael Redgrave, Joan Greenwood, Dame Edith Evans

Oscar Wilde’s comic jewel sparkles in Anthony Asquith’s film adaptation of THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. Featuring brilliantly polished performances by Michael Redgrave, Joan Greenw...

Directed by Ted Wilde • 1928 • United States
Starring Harold Lloyd, Ann Christy, Bert Woodruff

SPEEDY was the last silent feature to star Harold Lloyd—and one of his very best. The slapstick legend reprises his “Glasses Character,” this time as a good-natured but scatterbrained New Yorker who ca...

Directed by Luis García Berlanga • 1961 • Spain
Starring Cassen, José Luis López Vázquez, Elvira Quintillá

Widely considered one of the greatest works of Spanish cinema, this relentlessly paced satire chronicles an ill-advised charity campaign sweeping across a small industrial town on Christmas...

Directed by Jacques Demy • 1973 • France
Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Micheline Presle

Feeling out of sorts, Marco (Marcello Mastroianni), an Italian driving instructor living in Paris, pays a visit to the doctor, who promptly diagnoses him as . . . four months pregnant. It’...

Directed by Sam Taylor and Fred Newmeyer • 1925 • United States
Starring Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston

Harold Lloyd’s biggest box-office hit was this silent comedy gem, featuring the befuddled everyman at his eager best as a new college student. Though he dreams of being a big man on campus, the ...

Directed by Luis García Berlanga • 1953 • Spain
Starring Lolita Sevilla, Manolo Morán, José Isbert

A distant land shrouded in myth and rumor, America looms large in the cultural imagination of a quiet Castilian village, whose impressionable inhabitants dream of benefitting from the country’s pos...

Directed by Charles Chaplin • 1918 • United States

From the depths of a trench in war-torn France, Chaplin supplies a little levity to a stark situation as an American soldier dreams of one day becoming a WWI hero. A man can dream can't he?

Directed by Charles Chaplin • 1922 • United States

Chaplin plays a productive bricklayer who lives by the adage, "Work hard, play hard." With a stack of money burning a hole in his pocket, he bickers with his wife on the best way to allocate the payday funds.

Directed by Juzo Itami • 1988 • Japan
Starring Nobuko Miyamoto, Rentaro Mikuni, Masahiko Tsugawa

Nobuko Miyamoto returns to the role of Ryoko Itakura, the tough-as-nails government tax investigator whom you most definitely don’t want to cross, in Juzo Itami’s energetic, genre-twisting follow-up ...

Directed by Charles Chaplin • 1921 • United States

Idle hands are the devil's workshop; unemployed hands lead to pure mischief. Charlie Chaplin's iconic Tramp takes a "vacation" at a golf resort where he is mistaken for one of the members. The Tramp hopes to merely play through, but landing in t...