Some Like it Hot
Directed by Billy Wilder
1959
American comedy has never been funnier, and the Legion of Decency was appalled: Wilder ran a single disguise for two hours without ever letting the joke thin out.
★ 9.4
The Movies canon
Sourced and screened.
Every film chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 731 films or filter by genre, director, place, and year.
Browse all 731 films or filter by genre, director, place, and year.
It Happened One Night
Directed by Frank Capra
1934
It helped launch the screwball comedy and left fingerprints on every romance that followed: a runaway heiress, a broke reporter, a night bus, and a blanket hung between two beds.
★ 7.7
Bringing Up Baby
Directed by Howard Hawks
1938
Nobody talks faster than this: Hawks overlapped every line until the dialogue becomes a physical event, and it did badly enough that exhibitors called Hepburn box office poison.
★ 7.1
His Girl Friday
Directed by Howard Hawks
1940
Hawks made the reporter a woman and the ex-husband her editor, then had them talk over each other so fast the film runs at over two hundred words a minute.
★ 7.0
The Philadelphia Story
Directed by George Cukor
1940
Katharine Hepburn was labeled box-office poison and controlled the rights to her comeback vehicle: she picked the director and approved the cast, then let Cary Grant and James Stewart crash her wedding.
★ 6.6
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Directed by John Hughes
1987
John Hughes wrote it in three days: two men try to get home for Thanksgiving, and John Candy turns what starts as a comic irritant into the most devastating performance of his career.
★ 6.2
The Naked Gun
Directed by David Zucker
1988
The Zucker team moved their television cop parody to the big screen and improved it: Leslie Nielsen anchors a squad room where three more gags are running behind every line.
★ 6.0
Caddyshack
Directed by Harold Ramis
1980
Bill Murray improvised nearly all of his part and the gopher was added after shooting finished: a country club comedy with no functioning plot and absolutely no need for one.
★ 5.1
The Awful Truth
Directed by Leo McCarey
1937
Cary Grant became Cary Grant in this film: Leo McCarey threw out the script daily and improvised on set, and a divorcing couple sabotage each other's new engagements out of pure spite.
★ 4.2
The Jerk
Directed by Carl Reiner
1979
Steve Martin's first starring role opens with him claiming to have been born a poor black child, and never stops that far from the line: pure stupidity performed with total commitment.
★ 4.1
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
Directed by Frank Capra
1936
Frank Capra and Gary Cooper at the height of the New Deal: a tuba-playing greeting card poet inherits twenty million dollars and finds out what New York wants from him.
★ 2.9