Sentences with phrase «for screwball»

The stage is set for some screwball antics but instead of light hearted jokes, we are treated to vicious tricks and back talk.

When the very first scene is a fortune teller attempting to get her customer drunk in order to make her vague prediction seem more impactful, the tone is set for a screwball romp.

Known mainly to audiences for his screwball work in films like Notting Hill, Ifans has never offered so accomplished and meaty a performance as he does in Anonymous.

Laurie Boeder is a lifelong movie fan and professional writer who especially loves the fabulous Hollywood films of the»40s,»50s and»60s, and has a soft spot for screwball comedies, cheesy old sci - fi, and old - fashioned patriotic potboilers.

On the one hand, it wants to be a thinking man action's picture, the sort that hires against type for its leading role (Wilson is best known for his screwball comedies).

Baera's co-penned the script I Heart Huckabees was refreshing for its screwball originality.

Brooke's ex-boyfriend Daryl (Michael Chernus, who plays a similar role in PEOPLE PLACES THINGS) and ex-bestie Mamie Claire (Heather Lind) are both there purely as script devices for screwball - inspired shenanigans to ensue.

Quick - paced, quippy dialogue aims for screwball sass and sizzle, but doesn't quite hit the mark.

Last year Juan Marichal saw this activity, the plate umpire reaching in a special ball bag at his waist to introduce a special ball to the game, and not being aware of the procedure, Marichal felt that he was the victim of some odd plot, that perhaps the ball he would get from the umpire was going to pop in two and emit smoke as he gripped it for his screwball.

Not exact matches

The pace of Star Wars is rapid fire for most of its hour and 57 minutes, and the script is filled with a verbal and visual wit that has been rare in Hollywood movies since the screwball comedies of the «30s.

This man should not be put in charge of a whelk stall, so my friends, at this dawn of a New Year for us all and the club we love, please say a prayer to whatever you believe in for that deity - or just fate, if you prefer — for something, ANYTHING, to remove this screwball manager from our club.

Trump's New York co-chair, Carl Paladino, slammed Ryan, calling him a «screwball» for criticizing some of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee's controversial statements.

Donald Trump's New York co-chair slammed House Speaker Paul Ryan Wednesday as a «screwball» for criticizing some of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee's controversial statements.

Pitching also involves the ability to angle the wrist through varying degrees of rotation and deviation for pitches such as curveballs, sliders, sinkers, and screwballs.

But to complain that nothing much happens here or ponder the film's curiously tame view of university life (Rodney Dangerfield would most definitely get no respect here) is to miss the point of the movie, which is to serve as a vehicle for McCarthy, spotlighting her warm, screwball spirit and irrepressible physical comedy.

While the potential is here for a «screwball / roadtrip / buddy comedy» HOMERUN... this sadly only ends up being about a «double play».

The film has more in common with 1930s screwball (films filled with obvious coincidences) than the more clunky, often - humorless films that pass for «rom - coms» today.

There is, no doubt, a great screwball comedy to be made about adult children who won't leave home, and the mothers and fathers who collude in the arrangement — and not just for reasons of economics.

For my money, still the best Bond, with a screwball plotline that keeps the locales changing and the surprises coming — even when reason dictates that the picture should be over.

Granted by France's Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers, the SACD Award for best French - language film went to Pierre Salvadori's screwball crime romcom «The Trouble with You.»

Plenty of screwball comedy, slapstick, sight gags, stupid word play, and overall silliness is all you will get for the 85 minutes duration, where nothing is serious, not even the end credits.

Sure, I would have preferred the whole film be about Beatty's Hughes and the many colorful characters — Matthew Broderick especially, but also Alec Baldwin, Candice Bergin, etc — rather than a screwball romance between two young people for whom life's lessons still await.

3 Toni Erdmann German writer - director Maren Ade filters screwball comedy through the sober aesthetic of the Romanian new wave — long takes, no score, epic running time — for this demented tale of a fractious father - and - daughter relationship.

This all too rare comic foray for the actress found Sidney as a Ruritanian princess and lookalike actress (yeah, it's one of those dual identity movies) has a screwball spin on its now familiar curves.

Delightfully cheerful screwball comedy that is especially suited for the Christmas holidays.

Sometimes, it's just a simple overlap in theme, subject matter, or setting — the way, for example, that a screwball comedy like Mistress America can faintly resemble an earnest melodrama like Ten Thousand Saints, if only by virtue of both being about surrogate siblings.

JUMP TOMORROW (Grade: B): This story of a shy, buttoned - down, Nigerian - born man who falls for an impulsive young Spanish woman is an old - fashioned screwball road - trip romance with a modern flair and a funky lounge score.

10 Rules for Sleeping Around (R for crude humor, sexuality, nudity, profanity and drug use) Screwball comedy revolving around the attempt by an adventurous couple (Jesse Bradford and Virginia Williams) in an open marriage to keep their sex life fresh and exciting long past the honeymoon.

by Walter Chaw Casting about wildly for that elusive «Lubitsch Touch» so prized by his hero Billy Wilder, underdog - uplift auteur Cameron Crowe has patched together Elizabethtown: an awkward, shambling, Frankenstein's monster of a romantic screwball farce that, for all its slickness, shows off every one of its bolts and stitches in monstrous bas relief.

There are vestiges of the classic screwball formula in Phantom Thread, where a workaholic nerd (like Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby) is overrun by a free - spirited dame who will not take no for an answer.

After failing to win the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (he lost to Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, which is a very good performance in a fine film, but come on), James Stewart was rewarded by the Academy the very next year for The Philadelphia Story, in which he plays third lead to Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in George Cukor's monumental screwball.

Maybe not in the Coen brothers» top tier, this modern screwball is nonetheless severely underrated, with charismatic, goofy performances from George Clooney and Catherine Zeta - Jones and a twist - heavy script that acts as a showcase for the Coens» indebtedness to Preston Sturges.

Working for the first time with a serious budget — and «Lethal Weapon» producer Joel Silver — the Coens managed to produce their first outright flop, a $ 25 - million screwball comedy about the invention of the hula hoop.

There's real potential in this premise for a ripping screwball comedy anchored by two likeable actors, but the filmmakers simply don't trust the material, stirring in constant elements of action mayhem that don't work at...

His slangy eloquence, his brilliance at scene making, and his nose for the zeitgeist fostered a slew of smash movie classics, including the seminal silent gangster film Underworld (1927), which won the first Oscar for best original screen story, and its sound - film successor, Scarface (1932); the screwball satire Nothing Sacred (1937); and the seductive romantic thriller, Notorious (1946).

Yet credit co - writer / director Will Gluck («Easy A») for obviously trying to evoke the kind of snappy, screwball, romantic comedy that was once embodied by droll pros like Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is at its heart a screwball caper, wherein Gustave finds himself framed for Madame D's murder and on the run from the cops (led by Ed Norton, resplendent in his giant handlebar moustache) and Madame D's unscrupulous son (Adrien Brody, essentially dressed as Snidely Whiplash) and bodyguard (Willem Dafoe, clad in a black turtleneck with matching skull - emblazoned brass knuckles).

Packed with sparkling dialogue and stellar performances, the film represents Hollywood screwball at its most effervescent, but as James Harvey argues in his liner notes for our release, its achievement is profound, marked by «the richness, completeness, and resonance by which we recognize something fully and seriously done, whether we can explain it or not.»

The German director Ernst Lubitsch (1892 - 1947) is best known for the insouciant screwball comedies he made in Hollywood.

I yearned for the laugh - out - loud fluidity of, say, Russell's Flirting With Disaster — a rare example of modern screwball done right.

The warm affection for foibles, the lightning - quick volleys of verbiage, the screwball forward plunge of the montage: So much of what made Frances Ha special is right here, too.

Russell's penchant for barely controlled chaos just isn't funny in the context of diagnosed mental illness, and while Playbook's late shift into a conventional, crowd - pleasing rom - com works exceedingly well, it does so at the expense of all the previous manic episodes, making it seem as if men who suffer from bipolar disorder just need to find a screwball dame to nurse them to health via wacky dance routines.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes — Howard Hawks lunatic screwball musical stars Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell as a pair of hot chicks looking for husbands on a cruise ship.

Babbit attempts to make a sort of madcap, screwball comedy out of the entire situation, with Shannon and Martha carting their corpse around the city in a bin while resorting to desperate measures for cash.

Mistress America continues to play up Gerwig's gift for physical comedy, and the plot, which whisks Brooke and Tracy to Connecticut in search of startup money, gives the second half a screwball zaniness unmatched in Baumbach's work since Mr. Jealousy.

Also directed by Fleming, the film is a romantic drama with screwball attitude, show - biz color and a melodramatic streak, an alchemy that isn't always smooth but seems just right for the era.

It's like a screwball Hitchcock film reworked for the freewheeling eighties indie culture (including cameo appearances by John Waters, John Sayles and The Feelies as the high school reunion band), and as their baggage tumbles out along the way, her past catches up in the form a creepily charming bad - boy ex.

With the screenwriters» ingenious idea of combining screwball comedy with vivid images of genocide, all the ingredients are there for this film to be a massive, unprecedented success.

Its situational dilemmas, fierce character archetypes and screwball sensibility toward gender roles seem fitting for an early 90s sitcom.

Screwball comedies are clearly a favorite for Mr. Allen to write, but his directing leans more towards the leisurely pace found in more traditional rom - coms.