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  • What to Do If You’re Facing Sexual Harassment at Work — Every Movie Has a Lesson

    What to Do If You’re Facing Sexual Harassment at Work — Every Movie Has a Lesson



    It is true that strict laws are decreed in the workplace against sexual harassment in the US but it still continues to happen even today. A 2025 Traliant survey found that 46% of employees had seen harassment in the last five years and 24% who reported it had been harassed themselves.

    According to Sexual Harassment Law Firm CA, workplace sexual harassment is any unwelcome behavior or conduct that is sexual in nature and creates an intimidating, offensive, or hostile workplace.

    You must learn to protect yourself if you are being a target of sexual harassment in your workplace. If you have been sexually harassed at work, you may be able to make a range of claims for damages. It is never right to tolerate inappropriate conduct. Document each and every incident carefully, and take time to understand your company’s policies, to whom you should report sexual harassment incidents, and who can be your support during this time.

    Let’s start with self-empowerment to make your workplace safe and respectful.

    Understanding Sexual Harassment

    Sexual offenses transform the office into a toxic space. There could be advances, suggestive comments, or gestures from a fellow worker or a superior.

    Such acts unsettle and harm your mental wellness plus working capacity. Anyone, not necessarily someone above the victim, can perpetrate verbal, physical, or visual harassment.

    The smallest insinuations build a very overpowering atmosphere. Recognizing such a factor should mean recognizing when a boundary has been crossed.

    Documenting Incidents

    When abuse occurs at a workplace, one needs to document the incident of such abuse so that the offender may be held accountable for their acts. The record shall indicate the precise date, hour, and site of occurrence. Detailed descriptions of the crime, spoken words, and names of possible witnesses can later be a means of drawing up a pattern of conduct. 

    Keep your notes in order, whether they are in a journal or on a computer. Keep up to date with the occurrences. Also, any emails or text messages that appear to relate to the harassment should be kept. 

    Documentation provides a platform not just for the allegations but also for feelings of empowerment. Keep in mind that a clear record is the first step toward staying secure and well at work.

    Reporting the Behavior

    Reporting the behavior to management may seem difficult, but it is necessary to protect your rights.

    Search for the company policy against harassment. Find out to whom you should direct your report: your immediate supervisor, an HR representative, or an ethics officer.

    Have written documentation ready when reporting. Provide a full or brief account of the incident, including dates, places, and whether any witnesses were present. 

    Indicate how the behavior affected you personally and those close to you or around you. Legal protection exists to safeguard you. 

    If this system does not protect you or makes raising a concern impossible, then justice must come into existence outside the organization. You and your coworkers have a right to decent working conditions.

    Seeking Support and Resources

    Healing from workplace harassment must be supported with assistance and solutions. Some trusted friends and family members are good people to provide support for you. Talking to someone about your negative experience gives you some peace of mind.

    Seek a counselor or therapist who takes care of workplace issues with the ability to offer coping strategies tailored to your situation.

    There are therapeutic small groups or even online forums that allow you to meet and mingle with other victims. You are not alone.

    If there is an Employee Assistance Program in your company, check for resources and counseling under strict confidentiality. Above anything else, take care of your present self.

    Knowing Your Rights and Protections

    Know your rights in the protective measures against sexual harassment at the workplace. It is your right to work in an environment free of harassment. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prevents sex discrimination and harassment. Several other federal laws are also in place to prevent harassment.

    Learn your organization’s harassment policy, as the document will outline your possible path of reporting and what procedure will follow.

    Retaliation following an assertion of harassment is unlawful; maintain documentation of all occurrences. You can file a charge with either the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or your corresponding local human rights agency.

    Your well-being is important and you have the right to defend yourself when you feel that your rights are being violated.



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  • 13 Shameless ’90s Comedy Movies That Just Don’t Care If You’re Offended

    13 Shameless ’90s Comedy Movies That Just Don’t Care If You’re Offended


    These shameless ’90s comedy movies don’t care if you’re offended.

    They just want to make you laugh, no matter what. But at the same time, a lot of them smuggle in some smart observations, too.

    Think we missed a great ’90s comedy movie? Let us know in the comments.

    There’s Something About Mary (1998)

    Funniest Comedies
    Twentieth Century Fox – Credit: 20th Century Fox

    What’s in Mary’s hair (above) will be enough to keep some people from liking this movie not matter what. There’s also plenty of bathroom and private parts humor (notably in the spectacular opening sequence) that the sensitive won’t be able to endure.

    And if they get through that, the movie takes the radical approach that people with disabilities should be very much in the mix when it comes to the jokes — not as the butt of them, but taking and throwing shots along with everyone else.

    All that said, There’s Something About Mary, like a lot of Farrelly Brothers movies— and ’90s movies — has a very big heart underneath all the gross-out jokes.

    Friday (1995)

    New Line Cinema – Credit: C/O

    The blunt talk of Craig (Ice Cube) and Smokey (Chris Tucker) will turn off a lot of people, but come on: Friday is funny. And we love the setup of goodhearted Craig getting pulled into trouble with Big Worm (Faizon Love) by partaking in the smallest possible share of Smokey’s stash.

    When it gets to the big face-off between Craig and Deebo (Tommy Lister Jr.), Friday left-hooks you with a pretty stellar message about gun violence and what it really means to man up. S

    ure, it’s better to settle your problems with words. But if that’s not an option, fists are a lot less likely to kill.

    Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)

    New Line Cinema

    There are so, so many dicey jokes in Austin Powers — it’s a movie gloriously packed with innuendo and overt gross-out jokes.

    But because the movie knows the jokes are silly and gross and stupid, it feels smart, and we feel smart laughing at it. It’s paying homage to decades of James Bond-style wordplay.

    Also, the scene where Austin refuses to bed Vanessa — “’cause you’re drunk, it’s not right” — has aged very well. We once saw it with a crowd of millennials, in 2017, and the line got an applause break. Yeah baby!

    Kingpin (1996)

    MGM

    The second Farrelly Brothers movie on our list would probably offend Amish people, if their beliefs allowed them to see it.

    They’re missing out on a lot of racy humor, most of it courtesy of Claudia (Vanessa Angel), as well as an absolutely terrific but filthy joke involving a bull.

    Woody Harrelson’s reaction to the best line in the movie — delivered by an Amish character, no less — is maybe his finest moment onscreen, a masterwork of understated acting. And you’ll never look at a milk mustache the same way again.

    It’s also on our list of the 7 Sexiest Movies About the Amish.

    Fear of a Black Hat (1994)

    The Samuel Goldwyn Company – Credit: C/O

    Starring  Rusty Cundieff, who also wrote and directed, Fear of a Black Hat is a sharp satire of constantly shifting hip-hop trends that reacted to them almost as quickly as they happened.

    The film, which premiered at Sundance, traces a political/gangster rap group called NWH (the H is for hats) that splinters into various other genres, including desperate diss tracks, P.M. Dawnesque philosophizing, and C&C Music Factory-style dance music.

    The movie’s love for hip-hop is obvious — you can’t satirize something this mercilessly without knowing it very well. We love this movie.

    Clerks (1994)

    Miramax – Credit: C/O

    Clerks is a Kevin Smith movie, so of course it’s loaded with coarse jokes — none rougher than a sequence in which Dante (Brian O’Halloran) laments the sexual history of his girlfriend (Marilyn Ghigliotti).

    Meanwhile Dante’s ex, Caitlin (Lisa Spoonauer) has a horrific, mistaken identity encounter with an elderly customer at the store where Dante, well, clerks.

    The iffy moments weren’t too offputting to keep the Library of Congress from adding Clerks to the United States National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” The film, made for an initial budget of about $27,575, helped usher in the indie film boom of the ’90s.

    Freeway (1996)

    Republic Pictures – Credit: C/O

    Matthew Bright pitch-black Freeway, starring a young Reese Witherspoon, is one of our favorite movies from the 1990s because of its relentless, almost grindhouse commitment to sensationalism. It’s making fun of the tabloid trash of the ’90s even as it perfects it.

    In this very twisted update on Little Red Riding Hood, Witherspoon plays an illiterate runaway trying to get to her grandmother’s house after her mother is arrested for sex work. Her Big Bad Wolf is Bob (Kiefer Sutherland), a supposed good samaritan who is actually a serial killer.

    One of the many pleasures of the movie is its exquisite casting: Besides the excellent leads, it features Dan Hedaya, Amanda Plummer, Brooke Shields and Bokeem Woodbine, among others.

    The Nutty Professor (1996)

    Paramount – Credit: C/O

    If you’re not much for what the kids (the really small ones) call potty talk, you’re not going to like The Nutty Professor, Eddie Murphy’s update of a squeaky clean 1963 Jerry Lewis movie of the same name.

    The film won Best Makeup at the 69th Academy Awards thanks to Murphy’s portrayal of not only rotund professor Sherman Klump, but also the members of his extended family, who are prone to rude noises.

    The movie also makes many, many jokes about Sherman’s weight, and though we’re rooting for Sherman, and against the people who mock him, it can be hard to watch — especially if you’ve struggled with your weight.

    Chasing Amy (1997)

    Miramax – Credit: C/O

    The plot of this Kevin Smith movie would be a non-starter today: A lesbian woman (Joey Lauren Adams) starts dating a heterosexual guy (Ben Affleck). Many people have found a lot wrong with the film — besides a premise that many find objectionable, it’s raunchy throughout.

    But it also has its strong defenders: It was pretty advanced, for a mainstream comedy of its time, in its presentation of gay characters.

    And filmmaker Sav Rodgers has made a new documentary, Chasing Chasing Amy, about how it led to his own queer coming out.

    The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

    Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

    Some people will flat-out reject the whole vibe of this deliciously demented Halloween movie (or is it a Christmas movie?) directed by Henry Selick, from the mind of Tim Burton. It’s about the Pumpkin King, Jack Skellington, who grows bored with simply crushing it every year at Halloween and decides to branch out into Christmas.

    It’s full of genuine scares — the clown with the tearaway face in the first moments is a good gauge of whether kids can handle the movie — but it never tones down the darkness, decay, or worms.

    Because of its total commitment to goth atmospherics, the people who love it — many of whom aren’t even in kindergarten yet — absolutely love it. And the people who don’t can go watch a million less thrilling holiday movies.

    As an added bonus, the film features a murderer’s row of voice talents, including Danny Elfman, who did the music, Paul Reubens, Catherine O’Hara and Chris Sarandon.

    American Pie (1999)

    Universal Pictures – Credit: C/O

    The surreptitious surveillance of Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth) hasn’t aged well at all, and the movie treats the situation too lightly for many modern audiences. (Plenty of people knew it was wrong in 1999, as well, including, to the movie’s credit, some characters in the film).

    But that’s only one of the potentially offensive things in American Pie, which also features, of course, a very upsetting scene between a young man (Jason Biggs) and a pie.

    South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (1999)

    Paramount – Credit: Comedy Central

    South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut seeks out sympathy for the devil: We’re supposed to root for Satan himself as he tries to escape an abusive relationship with Saddam Hussein.

    There’s also lots of violence against kids and flagrant anti-Canadian propaganda. But of course, Canadians were too nice to get offended.

    But the best thing about the movie is Satan realizing that he doesn’t need anyone — not even Saddam Hussein — to complete him. What he needs is a little time alone.

    Liked This List of Shameless ’90s Comedy Movies That Don’t Care If You’re Offended?

    Comedies That Don't Care If You're Offended
    Credit: United Film Distribution Company

    If so, you just might also like this list of ’90s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember.

    Or this video of ’80s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember.

    Main image: Kingpin. MGM.

    Editor’s Note: Corrects main image.



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  • Wes Anderson: ‘You’re hoping for the right…

    Wes Anderson: ‘You’re hoping for the right…



    Like many of your films, The Phoenician Scheme features a lot of fine art, and I liked that you show all the paintings in the end credits. How do you decide on the art you use in your work?

    Well, usually we’re making things for a movie and there may be some inspirations. We had these Russian forger brothers who worked on The Grand Budapest Hotel, and they did wonderful work, and they made a Klimt for us. They’ve also made other pictures for us: some cubist paintings that we had in the Henry Sugar movies we did, and they made me a Kandinsky that I have at home, all these fakes. And they’re wonderful fakes; they age them and they’re great.

    In the case of this film, I had the notion that I would like to use the real thing which you never do on a movie because, if you say, ‘We’re going to use a Renoir,’ well, it means that there’s a group of people who come with that painting, and there are rules, and you can’t get a light too close to a Renoir, and the temperature of the room and the dust level in the room has to be maintained, so it becomes an obstacle. And of course people don’t really want to give you their Renoir. But our friend Jasper Sharp, who’s a curator, we went about the process and we found pieces that were not too far away, that we weren’t transporting across the globe, so we borrowed things, and we did have a team of different security and different gloved people looking after them, and it was fine. It takes a bit of effort, it has a bit of cost, but it was a great thing because you could feel it on the set. These pieces never just appeared, they arrived with some fanfare and with a bit of warning. ‘Everybody, here’s the real thing.’

    The actors felt it. They were in the presence of these real pieces, and Zsa-zsa is a collector. He likes to own things. He’s a possessor. For instance, he gives his daughter this rosary, and we decided, ’Well, let’s use real diamonds, real emeralds, real rubies.’ We went to Cartier, and they made this piece for us, and they own it, but they loaned it to us. Every time Liesel is holding this in her hand, she’s holding however many thousands of euros of diamonds and rubies. It took Mia some time to feel comfortable, because it would break sometimes and it had to be repaired, but it was interesting and fun to do it that way, and I think they look better.

    As someone who is so particular about aspect ratios and film formats in your films, I’m curious to know if there’s any film formats you’d be interested in working with. VistaVision is having a renaissance at the moment…

    Well, I wanted to shoot on VistaVision.

    Oh, no way!

    We didn’t do it in the end because the logistics of it seemed to defeat us. At a certain point, we were just trying to make a certain budget work, but VistaVision was my first choice. What I actually am planning to do and just am doing some tests right now to determine is… so, I shoot on film. This movie is shot on 35 millimetre film, but as you know, 99% of the theatrical screenings in a cinema are a DCP, and the DCP is almost like you’re screening the negative. When you make a print, there’s grain in the print. So you have the grain from the negative and you have the grain from the print, and it’s not as sharp as the DCP. The DCP is as sharp as the original negative. I’ve watched my films as a DCP against the 35 millimetre film print, and the print is… it has the quality of film, and the film print is different. It has the magical thing of being a film print, but it doesn’t have the detail of the DCP. So what I’m going to try to do here is to make 70 millimetre prints from our 35 millimetre negative, which has been made into a 4K DCP, and see what that’s like because I think that that might be a kind of combination which hasn’t quite been done, and which might produce a very good film print.That’s a response to what you just said, which is not really an answer to your question.

    No, no, you did answer the question! That’s fascinating to hear – and it’s interesting given how many films shot on digital are transferred to prints nowadays. 

    Well the idea is you just shoot on 65 the old way, 65 millimetre and you print on 70, but maybe using the digital intermediate at 4K might match something like that… but anyway, I guess we’ll see. I probably will not accomplish the same effect, but it’ll be some other thing in between.

    And you always discover something from doing these experiments. Sometimes the things that you end up creating are not what you wanted to create, but they’re great anyway. 

    Yes. You’re hoping for the right accident.

    What a lovely way of putting it! Speaking of fathers and daughters, your daughter has a small part in this film, and I was curious to know if this was her idea or your idea?

    I think virtually every filmmaker’s daughter who’s ever been in one of their films, it was the daughter’s idea. [laughs] I was reluctant to put my daughter in a movie. But I’m glad I put her in because I love what she did.

    Oh, I loved what she did! She understood completely her role.

    She was very thoughtful about it and very focused, and it was a great experience for her, but you know, I don’t particularly think everybody needs to know that that’s who that is, but I guess anybody who’s interested will quickly figure that out. She loved doing it, though. I will say she wants to do it again.

    The Phoenician Scheme is rooted in the idea of legacy, whether that’s familial legacy or artistic legacy, and what we leave behind, and what is left to the wider world when we die. Not to sound horribly morbid, but I’m curious, is that something that you end up thinking about a lot?

    Let me think… I’ll say this: I have never made a movie where I would feel comfortable saying, ‘oh, that one was a mistake’. I’ve only made the movies I really wanted to make: my own movies. If somebody likes one and hates another, they’re still part of my family, and I just have to live with whatever they all are, how they are. I’ve always tried to treat them as a body of work to some degree, and even now we’re doing a thing with the Criterion Collection, they’re releasing my first 10 movies as a boxset. We’re doing a similar thing with the soundtracks, and we have the books about the films, and so on. So it’s something that I am conscious of and have been conscious of. I want these movies to all sit together as a set.

    After the event of my death, I don’t really know if there’s really much point, but I do think about it in relation to my daughter. She’s going to be the one who is responsible for this stuff and I want it to all be in order for her. And I feel like so many people’s work, my own and all my collaborators – and there’s a lot of collaborators and a lot of artisans of so many kinds, all these actors, my co-writers and directors of photography, and production designers and painters and sculptors and puppet makers – all this work is contained in these movies. I feel it’s partly my job to look after them.

    This ties into the exhibition that is happening at the Cinémathèque Français at the moment and that will be in London later in the year at the Design Museum, and making sure that this work isn’t lost to time like so much amazing art and so much amazing film history is.

    You know, the exhibition wasn’t something I particularly wanted to do because I knew it was gonna take some time. It’s too much trouble! But I’ve been saving all this stuff all these years. I’ve been storing all these props and pictures and all these puppets, and so every now and then someone would want to show them. I kept saying, ‘I need to be older for this,’ but then when the Cinémathèque wanted to do it we decided it was time. The Cinémathèque to me is something that’s important to support, and the fact they wanted to do this, turned out to be a way for us to get everything organised for it to be an ongoing thing, so it’ll go to London, and then it has other destinations after that. I was dreading the process because I just want to work on my movies! But then in the course of it, working with a lot of people who I know well, and then Cinémathèque and the Design Museum, it turned out to be a good experience. I was there yesterday, in fact, because I had an official task to do, and there were all these kids and students in there, looking at our puppets… there was something rewarding about it.



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  • 13 Shameless ’80s Comedies That Just Don’t Care If You’re Offended

    13 Shameless ’80s Comedies That Just Don’t Care If You’re Offended


    These shameless ’80s comedies had a rowdier sense of humor than the films of today. They didn’t worry if you were offended — they just wanted to make you laugh.

    Porky’s (1981)

    Kim Catrall in Porky’s. 20th Century Fox.

    It will never stop amusing us that the guy who made Porky’s, the great director Bob Clark, also made A Christmas Story. (He also made the horror movie Black Christmas and the kids movie Baby Geniuses. Talk about range.)

    Porky’s is one of those ’80s comedies that kids were often shielded from, which in retrospect makes sense: Though it was presented as a freewheeling comedy, it’s filled with weird humiliations, often of a sexual nature, and of course includes a peeping scene that doesn’t meet modern standards of consent.

    But to call back A Christmas Story, Bob Clark didn’t give a fuuuuuuuuuuudge.

    Trading Places (1983)

    Paramount – Credit: C/O

    At one point, Dan Aykroyd disguises himself as a Jamaican. That isn’t great. And some people have objected to the scene where a gorilla takes a bad guy as his mate. Maybe that isn’t so funny in retrospect.

    But other elements ofTrading Places are incredibly good, including the film’s very smart take on nature vs. nurture, and its smart observations about all the assumptions our society makes about who deserves to be rich.

    We love it’s then-modern update on the screwball comedies of the 1930s, and Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy and Jamie Lee Curtis are all extremely good. It’s one of our favorite ’80s comedies.

    Better Off Dead (1985)

    Warner Bros.

    John Cusack plays Lane Meyer, a teenager who attempts, repeatedly, to remove himself from this earth after he’s dumped by his girlfriend, Beth Truss (Amanda Wyss) for cocky blonde guy Roy Stalin (Aaron Dozier).

    The whole plot would never fly today, nor the slapstick jokes around a teenage boy trying to end himself. But the entire movie is such masterful absurdist comedy that no thinking person could possibly take it seriously.

    Also, like many of the movies of the time, it features some dicey Asian characters, but at least they’re good at racing and have girlfriends. We’d say they’re much cooler, at least by high school standards, than poor Lane is.

    Finally, Diane Franklin (above, with Cusack) is excellent as Monique, a notably smart, capable and cool dream girl. So there’s that. This is maybe the most ’80s of all ’80s comedies.

    The Man With Two Brains (1983)

    Warner Bros.

    The whole setup of this dark screwball comedy will feel a tad misogynistic to some: Steve Martin plays a mad neurosurgeon, Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr, who falls in love with femme fatale Dolores Benedict (Kathleen Turner), then builds up resentment as she declines to consummate their marriage.

    Meanwhile, he falls in love with a disembodied brain, Anne (voiced by Sissy Spacek) and begins searching for a body in which to house her. Along the way, he roots for one attractive woman to die, and ponders killing another. It all crescendoes in a joke at the expense of compulsive eaters.

    It’s not in the same league as The Jerk, a previous collaboration between Steve Martin and director Carl Reiner, but it has some very funny scenes.

    Heathers (1988)

    New World Pictures

    Heathers is the most pitch black of ’80s comedies, and embodies fatalistic Gen X cool. It was written by Daniel Waters as a kind of counter-point to the generally sunnier John Hughes comedies of the day.

    The film stars Christian Slater as a charismatic teen lunatic who enlists popular girl Veronica in his plot to start offing popular kids, and staging things to make it look like they did themselves in — enlisting nefarious props like mineral water to makethe crime scenes more convincing.

    Remember, this was the ’80s, when the idea of deadly suburban high-school kids seemed hilariously absurd. A recent attempt to revive Heathers as a TV series was delayed and derailed by multiple incidents of real-life school violence that may the idea seem very unfunny to modern viewers.

    Coming to America (1988)

    Paramount

    There’s something to offend everyone in the brilliant comic grotesquerie of Coming to America, a movie that goes after almost every demographic but respects all variety of hustles. Eddie Murphy takes the Richard Pryor trick of playing several characters in the same scene and, with the help of make-up, perfects it.

    Coming to America has countless jokes that young, modern audiences may find shocking, but hey: They were also shocking when the movie came out. Eddie Murphy and his collaborators just didn’t care. They wanted hard laughs, and they got them.

    Airplane (1980)

    Paramount – Credit: C/O

    Airplane is loaded with questionable jokes, including June Cleaver herself speaking jive. It’s deeply inappropriate — and also one of the funniest things that has ever happened in a movie.

    Kudos to David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker — synonymous with ’80s comedies — for coming up with the idea of Barbara Billingsley delivering the line, “Oh stewardess? I speak jive.” And also for the 7,000 other great jokes in Airplane, one of the all-time greatest comedies that don’t care if you’re offended.

    The ZAZ team also came up with two more of the all-time great comedies on this list.

    More on Airplane (and the Next Two Movies on This List)

    Paramount – Credit: C/O

    “When we do screenings of Airplane! we get the question if we could do Airplane! today,” David Zucker, one-third of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker trio, recently said in an interview with PragerU. “The first thing I could think of was, ‘Sure, just without the jokes.’”

    He also complained that modern Hollywood is “destroying comedy because of nine percent of the people who don’t have a sense of humor.”

    Top Secret (1984)

    Paramount – Credit: Paramount

    This film, the second Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker classic on our list, features muscle-bound, gun-totin’ Black French character named Chocolate Mousse. At one point a bad guy is mounted by a bull. An extreme facial disfigurement gets one of the movie’s biggest laughs.

    Top Secret is also, for our money, maybe the funniest movie ever made: It’s an absurdist caper that crosses a Cold War spy thriller with an Elvis movie, with perfectly orchestrated sight gags that get better with ever watch. The backward bookshop scene? Mesmerizing.

    Top Secret also includes one of the all-time best jokes of ’80s comedies: “My uncle was born in America. But he was one of the lucky ones. He managed to escape in a balloon during the Jimmy Carter presidency.” That’s a great setup and payoff, whatever your politics.

    The Naked Gun (1988)

    Paramount – Credit: Paramount

    The final Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker film on our list, The Naked Gun features a dizzying, hilarious array of risque jokes, all of which are terrific. The building statues sequence is a standout.

    It’s also the only film on this list to co-star a man once accused of double homicide — a rarity among ’80s comedies.

    No one is apologizing.

    Sixteen Candles (1984)

    Credit: Universal Pictures

    John Hughes’ Sixteen Candles has gotten a lot of criticism, in retrospect, for the stereotypical Long Duk Dong character (played by Gedde Watanabe) and a scene that makes Anthony Michael Hall’s character seem predatory, in retrospect.

    Watanabe told NPR in 2008 that he was a “a bit naive” about taking on the role of Long Duk, though he still has affection for him.

    As for the other thing: Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling), who is presented as the dream guy of our heroine, Samantha (Molly Ringwald), passes off his unconscious girlfriend, Caroline (Haviland Morris), to another guy, Ted (Anthony Michael Hall, with Morris, above). Jake tells Ted, “Have fun.”

    The next day, Caroline and the Ted conclude that they had sex. He asks if she enjoyed herself, and she says, “You know, I have this weird feeling I did,” which is the movie’s way of justifying the guys’ behavior.

    Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

    Universal – Credit: Universal Pictures

    Fast Times is the one of those ’80s comedies that is may be more offensive to religious conservatives than people on the left, because it takes the side of a high school student, Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh, above right, with Phoebe Cates), who has an abortion after a smooth talker gets her pregnant and then turns out to be a worthless deadbeat.

    Like Porky’s, this was one of those movies that kids in school yards spoke of in whispers — as one of those ’80s comedies that parents definitely didn’t want them to see.

    It may have just been because of the famous Phoebe Cates pool fantasy sequence, but we don’t think so. The movie’s presentation of teen realities was a much bigger threat to the Moral Majority, the religious fundamentalists who thrived through the 1980s.

    Liked Our List of Shameless ’80s Comedies That Just Don’t Care If You’re Offended?

    Spaceballs Zuniga Vespa
    20th Century Fox – Credit: C/O

    You might also like these two ’80s lists: The Best Cocky Blond Guys in ’80s Movies, and the Best Cute Brunette Friends in ’80s Movies.

    You might also like this list of 12 Rad ’80s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember, featuring quite a few ’80s comedies.

    Main image: Fast Times at Ridgemont High.



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  • 13 Shameless Comedies That Just Don’t Care If You’re Offended

    13 Shameless Comedies That Just Don’t Care If You’re Offended


    These shameless comedies don’t care if you’re offended — they only care about making you laugh.

    Not Another Teen Movie (2000)

    Credit: C/O

    A brutal but affectionate takedown of teen movies from Lucas to She’s All That to Fast Times at Ridgemont High to The Breakfast Club, Not Another Teen Movie is a blitzkrieg of offense filled with sex, bathroom jokes, insane violence and surprisingly acute social commentary.

    Where else can you see Chris Evans misusing a banana, white kids who pretend to be Asian, and football players split in half?

    Not Another Teen Movie could cut every offensive joke and still be very funny, but it gets extra points for the sheer audacity of keeping them in.

    White Chicks (2004)

    Credit: Columbia

    Marlon and Shawn Wayans play Black FBI agents who impersonate rich white socialites to infiltrate a pompous Hamptons social scene — and break up a conspiracy. Along the way they learn how white people act when they think no one of other races are around, but also start to see the world from a woman’s perspective.

    If you’re not offended by something in White Chicks, you aren’t paying attention. The Wayans take down privileged white people, but also everyone else, and make points about our weird racial and sexual hangups along the way. White Chicks always keeps you guessing about how far it will go, and it goes pretty far.

    Airplane (1980)

    Credit: C/O

    June Cleaver speaking jive is deeply inappropriate — and one of the funniest things that has ever happened in a movie.

    God bless Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker for coming up with the idea of Barbara Billingsley delivering the line, “Oh stewardess? I speak jive.” And also for the 7,000 other great jokes in Airplane, one of the all-time greatest comedies.

    You can question its taste if you want to, but you’d be better off just going with the laughs. There are a lot of them.

    Team America: World Police (2004)

    Credit: Paramount

    It’s impossible to take any self-righteous actor seriously after watching this puppet-movie spy thriller that despises Kim Jong-Il, but hates Sean Penn even more.

    Puppet love scenes, projectile vomiting that goes on much too long, unapologetic jingoism — Team America, from the creators of South Park, is a mockery of gung-ho nationalism, but also a compelling defense of American foreign policy at its best.

    There’s also a fantastic metaphor involving three different body parts that we think about way more than we should.

    Borat (2006)

    Credit: 20th Century Fox

    Sacha Baron Cohen impersonates a sexist, anti-Semitic, generally clueless Kazakh journalist who makes Americans feel free to say things they wouldn’t ordinarily say. He’s gloriously ignorant, but his guilelessness brings out the worst in people who should know better. (And also, very occasionally, the best.)

    Borat’s behavior is wildly offensive, but he’s so demented that you can’t help but feel sorry for him, and Baron Cohen and his team manage to strike a perfect mix of revulsion and vulnerability. What’s most impressive is how much of it Baron Cohen had to improvise on the fly, in tense and often dangerous positions.

    The 2020 sequel, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, is also terrific.

    The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)

    Comedies That Don't Care If You're Offended
    Credit: C/O

    With wall-to-wall gratuitous flesh and racial humor, The Kentucky Fried Movie is the modern-day definition of problematic, but it’s also a perfect time capsule of the freewheeling 1970s: It spots and skewers genres from kung-fu to Blaxploitation to women-in-prison movies in quick-hit, take-it-or-leave it sketches that are perfect sendups of a whole slew of grindhouse classics.

    It’s also an important movie, believe it or not — it was the breakthrough for its director, John Landis, and for its writers, the comedic team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, who would soon go on to make Airplane.

    Kentucky Fried Movie is one of those comedies that Gen X kids spoke of in whispers because so many of their parents banned them from seeing it. It has a well-earned reputation for what we used to call a dirty movie. It really is, in a way that still feels subversive, wrong, and thrilling.

    Also Read: The 12 Best Movie Plot Twists, Ranked

    Coming to America (1988)

    Credit: Paramount

    Are you Black, white, Jewish, Christian, African, American, young or old?

    There’s something to offend you in the cartoonish grotesquerie of Coming to America, in which Eddie Murphy plays people fitting into almost all of the demographics we just listed, mercilessly mocking them all.

    Coming to America takes shots at royalty, the nouveau riche, and the scrappy underclass, but is most focused on gender dynamics. It’s such a sharp judge of human behavior that the only appropriate reaction is awe.

    Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979)

    Credit: C/O

    Monty Python takes on the ultimate sacred cow: the story of Jesus. It looks as magnificent as Hollywood’s biggest Biblical epics, which makes its takedown of pomposity all the more subversive and hysterical.

    A great many great bits and routines darkly culminate in the deranged cheeriness of the final musical number, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”

    It’s all quite sacrilegious, and that’s the whole point.

    Tropic Thunder (2008)

    Credit: Paramount

    Tropic Thunder always walks a thin line, but especially with Ben Stiller’s Simple Jack character and Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of Kirk Lazarus, an Australian actor who really, really commits to playing a Black character.

    The film mocks actors desperate for awards, and it’s uncomfortable — but also funny. Stiller has admirably stuck to his guns, standing by his movie.

    “I make no apologies for Tropic Thunder,” Stiller tweeted last year when someone erroneously said he had apologized for the film. “Don’t know who told you that. It’s always been a controversial movie since when we opened. Proud of it and the work everyone did on it.”

    The Jerk (1979)

    Credit: Universal Pictures

    “I was born a poor Black child,” Steve Martin’s Navin Johnson explains at the start of this absurdist masterpiece, and it all builds up into a righteous kung-fu takedown at his hideously tacky mansion that features maybe the only time in history it’s been totally OK for a white guy to scream the most offensive of all racial slurs.

    No one else could have pulled of the balancing act except for Steve Martin, whose special purpose is to make us all laugh.

    We won’t pretend to be objective here: This is maybe our favorite movie out of all comedies, ever.

    South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (1999)

    Credit: Comedy Central

    South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut seeks out sympathy for the devil: We’re supposed to root for Satan himself as he tries to escape an abusive relationship with Saddam Hussein.

    There’s also lots of violence against kids and flagrant anti-Canadian propaganda.

    But of course, Canadians were too nice to get offended.

    Blazing Saddles (1974)

    Credit: Warner Bros.

    Blazing Saddles is filled with gags big and small, some of which will work for you and some of which won’t. It has quite a few race-based jokes, but the film is very much on the side of Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little), a Black sheriff trying to bring progress to the Wild West.

    The American Film Institute ranks Blazing Saddles as the sixth-funniest movie of all time, but director and co-writer Mel Brooks disagrees: “I love Some Like It Hot, but we have the funniest movie ever made,” Brooks told Vanity Fair in 2016, not caring if you’re offended.

    The five films that landed ahead of Blazing Saddles on AFI’s list were, from first to fifth, Some Like It Hot, Tootsie, Dr. Strangelove, Annie Hall, and Duck Soup.

    Bottoms (2023)

    Ayo Edebiri stars as Josie and Rachel Sennott as PJ in Bottoms, an Orion Pictures Release. – Credit: C/O

    We’re happily including Bottoms for everyone who thinks today’s comedies are afraid to be funny. In fact, it’s on our spinoff list from this one — 15 Shameless New Comedies That Just Don’t Care If You’re Offended.

    Bottoms is about “teen girls who start a fight club so they can try to impress and hook up with cheerleaders,” explains writer-director Emma Seligman. It breaks a lot of rules about what kind of violence it’s considered decent to present onscreen — the girls really do fight, and don’t always win — and resists recent play-it-safe rules that dictate that LGBTQ+ characters have to be saintly or victimized or both.

    “I think every human deserves to see a relatable, complicated, nuanced version of themselves on screen. And I don’t think that I’ve seen it enough for me to feel recognized,” says Seligman.

    Liked Our List of Shameless Comedies That Just Don’t Care If You’re Offended?

    Inspiring Movies Glory uplifting movies
    Glory, Tri-Star Pictures.

    You might also like this list of “Based on a True Story” Movies That Are Actually Pretty True or this list of 12 Rad ’80s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember.

    Main image: The Kentucky Fried Movie.

    Editor’s Note: Corrects main image.



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