A Somewhat Gentle Man (2010), Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), Carrie (1952), The Sting (1973), Double Indemnity (1944), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Crumb (1994), The Executioner (1963) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Dark Humor movies.
Storyline: Ulrik (Stellan Skarsgard) is an odd sort of criminal, utterly passive and willing to do what is asked of him, demanding little in return. For the last crime he committed he was sent to jail, but he's now getting out, and the prospect of freedom is less than enticing. His boss, Jensen (Bjørn Floberg), wants him to pursue revenge against the snitch who put him in prison. On top of that, Ulrik has to deal with his son, who has a new fiancée, and a family that doesn't think much of his profession.
Plot Keywords: black comedy, crime, revenge, midlife crisis, family relationships, dry humor, violence ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Paranoid Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper of Burpelson Air Force Base, believing that fluoridation of the American water supply is a Soviet plot to poison the U.S. populace, is able to deploy through a back door mechanism a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union without the knowledge of his superiors, including the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Buck Turgidson, and President Merkin Muffley. Only Ripper knows the code to recall the B-52 bombers and he has shut down communication in and out of Burpelson as a measure to protect this attack. Ripper's executive officer, RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (on exchange from Britain), who is being held at Burpelson by Ripper, believes he knows the recall codes if he can only get a message to the outside world. Meanwhile at the Pentagon War Room, key persons including Muffley, Turgidson and nuclear scientist and adviser, a former Nazi named Dr. Strangelove, are discussing measures to stop the attack or mitigate its blow-up into an all ...
Plot Keywords: black comedy, cold war, nuclear war, political satire, military, absurd, 1960s ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A farm girl (Jennifer Jones) goes to Chicago, meets men (Laurence Olivier, Eddie Albert) and becomes a stage star.
Plot Keywords: horror, thriller, mystery, psychological, supernatural, revenge, school ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Johnny Hooker, a small time grifter, unknowingly steals from Doyle Lonnegan, a big time crime boss, when he pulls a standard street con. Lonnegan demands satisfaction for the insult. After his partner, Luther, is killed, Hooker flees, and seeks the help of Henry Gondorff, one of Luther's contacts, who is a master of the long con. Hooker wants to use Gondorff's expertise to take Lonnegan for an enormous sum of money to even the score, since he admits he "doesn't know enough about killing to kill him." They devise a complicated scheme and amass a talented group of other con artists who want their share of the reparations. The stakes are high in this game, and our heroes must not only deal with Lonnegan's murderous tendencies, but also other side players who want a piece of the action. To win, Hooker and Gondorff will need all their skills...and a fair amount of confidence.
Plot Keywords: crime, drama, mystery, comedy, con, revenge, partnership ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In 1938, Walter Neff, an experienced salesman of the Pacific All Risk Insurance Co., meets the seductive wife of one of his clients, Phyllis Dietrichson, and they have an affair. Phyllis proposes to kill her husband to receive the proceeds of an accident insurance policy and Walter devises a scheme to receive twice the amount based on a double indemnity clause. When Mr. Dietrichson is found dead on a train track, the police accept the determination of accidental death. However, the insurance analyst and Walter's best friend Barton Keyes does not buy the story and suspects that Phyllis has murdered her husband with the help of another man.
Plot Keywords: film noir, crime, mystery, drama, murder, insurance fraud, betrayal ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL recounts the adventures of Gustave H, a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars, and Zero Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting and the battle for an enormous family fortune -- all against the back-drop of a suddenly and dramatically changing Continent.
Plot Keywords: comedy, adventure, drama, mystery, crime, stylized, eccentric characters ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: This movie chronicles the life and times of R. Crumb. Robert Crumb is the cartoonist/artist who drew Keep On Truckin', Fritz the Cat, and played a major pioneering role in the genesis of underground comix. Through interviews with his mother, two brothers, wife, and ex-girlfriends, as well as selections from his vast quantity of graphic art, we are treated to a darkly comic ride through one man's subconscious mind. As stream-of-consciousness images incessantly flow forth from the tip of his pen, biting social satire is revealed, often along with a disturbing and haunting vision of Crumb's own betes noires and inadequacies. As his acid-trip induced images flicker across our own retinas, we gain a little insight into this complex and highly creative individual.—Tad Dibbern <DIBBERN_D@a1.mscf.upenn.edu>
Plot Keywords: documentary, biography, art, american culture, counterculture, 20th century, controversy ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: An old executioner in early-1960s Spain, who is a very gentle, nice, caring man proud of traditions, is approaching retirement age. As his profession isn't the most popular, he worries about who might take his place. He worries about his daughter too; she seems doomed to spinsterhood because as soon as any prospective groom learns what her father's trade is, he flees in terror. Enter the local undertaker, a handsome young man with exactly the same problem: no girl wants him given his profession. So, you have the woman whom almost nobody would marry and the man whom almost nobody would marry. Obviously, they are meant for each other. But here the old executioner has something to say: He does not object to his daughter marrying the young undertaker; he seems a decent man--but he will only agree to the marriage if the prospective groom agrees to take the executioner's job when he retires. Father tells the worried fellow: "Don't worry, they sentence people, but they pardon them at the last moment!"—Jose Beltran <pepe@prince.pe.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
Plot Keywords: black comedy, satire, spanish cinema, social criticism, bureaucracy, moral dilemma, absurdism ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Brandon and Philip are two young men who share a New York City apartment. They consider themselves intellectually superior to their friend David Kentley, and as a consequence, decide to murder him. Together they strangle David with a rope and placing the body in an old chest, they proceed to hold a small party. The guests include David's father, his fiancée Janet, and their old schoolteacher Rupert, from whom they mistakenly took their ideas. As Brandon becomes increasingly more daring, Rupert begins to suspect.
Plot Keywords: suspense, thriller, crime, psychological, murder, alfred hitchcock, classic ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In prison awaiting execution the next morning, Louis, the 10th Duke of Chalfont, puts down on paper the events that led him to his current situation. His mother has been banished from her family, the D'Ascoynes, after she married Louis' father, who was considered far beneath her. After her death, the D'Ascoynes refused permission for her to be buried in the family crypt. Louis then plots his revenge, and kills all those ahead of him in the succession until he becomes the Duke. Along the way, he becomes involved with the married Sibelia who, when spurned, makes sure he ends up in prison. The day before his execution, Sibelia recants her testimony, saving him not only from the gallows, but also sets him free. Once outside the prison however, he realizes he's forgotten one little thing.
Plot Keywords: black comedy, crime, revenge, aristocracy, murder, british film, classic ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Dave Bannion is an upright cop on the trail of a vicious gang he suspects holds power over the police force. Bannion is tipped off after a colleague's suicide and his fellow officers' suspicious silence lead him to believe that they are on the gangsters' payroll. When a bomb meant for him kills his wife instead, Bannion becomes a furious force of vengeance and justice, aided along the way by the gangster's spurned girlfriend Debby. As Bannion and Debby fall further and further into the Gangland's insidious and brutal trap, they must use any means necessary (including murder) to get to the truth.
Plot Keywords: film noir, crime, mystery, thriller, police, corruption, revenge ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Spade and Archer is the name of a San Francisco detective agency. That's for Sam Spade and Miles Archer. The two men are partners, but Sam doesn't like Miles much. A knockout, who goes by the name of Miss Wonderly, walks into their office; and by that night everything's changed. Miles is dead. And so is a man named Floyd Thursby. It seems Miss Wonderly is surrounded by dangerous men. There's Joel Cairo, who uses gardenia-scented calling cards. There's Kasper Gutman, with his enormous girth and feigned civility. Her only hope of protection comes from Sam, who is suspected by the police of one or the other murder. More murders are yet to come, and it will all be because of these dangerous men -- and their lust for a statuette of a bird: the Maltese Falcon.
Plot Keywords: film noir, detective, mystery, crime, classic, hardboiled, greed ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Vigo, a port town in Spain, has fallen on hard times. The shipbuilding industry, which was a primary source of jobs, has laid off many workers. Several of these erstwhile shipbuilders spend their newfound free time at a local bar owned by their friend Rico (Joaquín Climent). The group is headed by Santa (Javier Bardem), a steadfast pragmatist who tries to keep the spirits of the men high. Troubles are many, however, including the marital problems of Amador (Celso Bugallo) and José (Luis Tosar).
Plot Keywords: unemployment, working class, social injustice, male friendship, resistance, spanish cinema, realism ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Approaching his senior years, widowed Manbei Kohayagawa is the owner of a small family run sake brewery in Kyoto. Hisao, his daughter Fumiko's husband, works for the company. Another daughter, Osaka based Akiko, who works at an art gallery, is widowed, her deceased husband who decided not to work in the family business, but maintain his own career as a college professor. Kohayagawa's third and last daughter, Noriko, a clerk in an office, has never been married, but is now of marrying age. Because the business is not doing well as it cannot compete with the larger sake companies, Kohayagawa wants to ensure that all his daughters are taken care of financially, which means finding husbands for both Akiko and Noriko, that task which is aided by Kohayagawa's younger brother-in-law, Yanosuke Kitagawa. Akiko and Noriko know about the arrangements with the potential husbands - although Akiko's first "date" is more of a surprise to her - and generally go along with the dates as are requested of them, but neither is sure if it is what she is looking for for herself. Akiko is quite content with her current lot in life, taking care of her growing son, Minoru. And Noriko has only confided in Akiko that she has a close friendship with a man named Tadashi Teramoto, a teacher who has just moved to Sapporo indefinitely for work. Kohayagawa's want for his daughters may also be because he has rediscovered companionship in his own life, with a former mistress, Sasaki Tsune, who he accidentally ran into after not seeing her for nineteen years. Sasaki has told him that her twenty-one year old daughter, spoiled Yuriko Tsune, is his biological daughter, something he believes, although Sasaki doesn't really know or care, as doesn't Yuriko, especially if they can get out of him what they want. Kohayagawa's family does not know of Sasaki currently in his life, but they do know of his marital indiscretion previously with her and do suspect that his "business meetings" which are ruses to meet with her are not what he says they are. Something that happens to Kohayagawa leads to Akiko and Noriko coming to some decisions about their own lives.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: family drama, marriage, generation gap, tradition vs modernity, father-daughter relationship, dark humor, tokyo ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Documentary on Charles Bukowski, author of 'Notes of a Dirty Old Man', 'Love Is a Dog from Hell', and the autobiographical novels, 'Women', 'Hollywood', and 'Post Office'.
Plot Keywords: documentary, biography, writer, poet, los angeles, counterculture, alcoholism ...
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