Comedy Genius

Jeunet and Caro's endlessly inventive and wildly enjoyable post-apocalyptic black comedy, about a sinister butcher and the circus clown who becomes his nemesis.

Andrew Bujalski’s hilarious and surreal comedy about the birth of computer culture, set in an early 1980s conference where primitive programmers take on chess masters.

A séance results in a man’s first wife returning from the dead in Noël Coward’s wonderful comedy.

Buster Keaton's masterpiece is widely and rightly regarded as one of the greatest comedies ever made.

Waterway hi jinks abound in this Buster Keaton classic, in which he plays the reluctant heir to his father's paddle steamer business.

Buster Keaton's superb, sophisticated silent comedy in which he dreams himself into the movie he's watching, in order to win back his girl.

A redneck lumberjack is recruited to work on a rookie producer's inane zombie movie, in this hilarious movie-making satire.

Accompanied by his faithful assistant Mills (Jesse Eisenberg), self-proclaimed genius K. Roth Binew (Mike O’Connell) decides to go out in style following a terminal prognosis – staging a living wake.

Yorgos Lanthimos' scary, witty tale of a dysfunctional Greek family is original, ingenious and sadly relevant as a study of parent-child relationships

Ho-Cheung Pang's wild, ribald comedy about a Hong Kong movie producer who will do anything to get his projects off the ground.

Takashi Miike's awesome riff on Romeo and Juliet, done as a pop musical stuffed with golden oldies from the 60s.

Ming-Liang Tsai's outrageous blend of sex, comedy, musical and drama is a daring, controversial and hilarious smorgasbord from one of Taiwan's most acclaimed directors.

Sophia Loren and Marcelo Mastroianni are irrepressible as a long-married couple in this exquisite and timeless comedy of our all-too-human foibles.

Irrepressible Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thieves) directs this Oscar-winning film of three comic tales of love and sex in three cities.

Four of the greatest Italian directors – Fellini, Visconti, De Sica and Monicelli – join forces with show-stoppers Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg and Romy Schneider in a carousel of sex and satire mocking the mores of Italian '60s society.

Jason Schwartzman is a hotshot writer with pathological intimacy problems in this caustic comedy of over-achievement.

Lukas Haas and Adam Scott play two old friends with a tempestuous history in this delightfully witty character comedy.

Todd Solondz directs Selma Blair and Jordan Gelber in this delightfully dark satire as romance blooms between a toy collector and a depressed woman.

Two self-confessed hedonists wreak wanton havoc in Věra Chytilová's visually spectacular neo-dadaist farce.

This story of a professional cremator whose increasingly deranged impulses are given free reign during Prague's Nazi occupation, is a brilliantly chilling mix of Dr Strangelove and Repulsion.

This wonderfully subtle comedy of provincial life is the debut film of the great director Ivan Passer (Cutter's Way) and one of the signature works of the Czech New Wave.

Marco Ferreri's provocative and controversial satire about four friends who retreat to a country mansion with the intention of eating themselves to death.

French anarcho-surrealist directors de Ververn and Delépine (Aaltra) present this outré odd-couple comedy about a factory worker out for revenge and the inept hitman she bonds with.

Eric Rohmer's needle-sharp satire of a mayor whose plans to build a provincial arts centre are scuppered by a local teacher.

A film about tractors, aphrodisiacs and forbidden love from Alain Guiraudie, the Cannes award-winning director of Stranger by the Lake.

Legendary actor Gérard Depardieu is at his most uninhibited as an abattoir worker who hits the road with wild abandon.

Joe Dante (Gremlins) directs this affectionate homage to 1950s sci-fi cinema, with John Goodman as a cigar-chomping B-movie producer trying to cash in on the Cuban missile crisis.

Sawako tries to save her father's ailing clam-packing business, but it's an uphill struggle, in Yuya Ishii's joyous, nuanced, comic drama.

An eccentric, pregnant young lady returns to her hometown to help her downtrodden old neighbours, in Yûya Ishii 's strange, whimsical comedy.

This hyperkinetic Korean comedy for the #MeToo era follows Bo-na, a dorky girl lacking social skills, self-confidence or any shred of fashion sense. That is until she discovers a secret video manual called 'How to Use Men'...

David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook) made his feature debut in 1994 with this biting black comedy, which caused a stir with its incestuous subplot and portrayal of adolescent restlessness.

Jessica Hausner’s long-awaited follow-up to Lourdes is a devilish anti-Rom-Com in which German poet seeks mates for a suicide pact.

During the Napoleonic wars, a soldier discovers a strange manuscript that reveals endless stories-within-stories. Wojciech Has' opus is a major cult film of the 60s, revered by Luis Buñuel, David Lynch and Jerry Garcia.

On a Tuscan break a fortysomething woman finds herself drawn to the company of a group of partying teens, including a young Tom Hiddleston (in one of his earliest roles).

Jon Sanders’ delightfully peculiar, Southern France-set rumination on art and marriage finds Anna Mottram’s actor Lydia reconsidering her life with her demanding theatre director husband.

A highly original comedy following a pair of professional male escorts and their interactions with their lonely, over-50s 'regulars'.

Ingmar Bergman’s Cannes prize-winning comedy assembles various couples in a country house in 1900.

Roberto Rossellini's film about a photographer who is given the power to rid the Earth of 'evil-doers'.

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s richly detailed tragicomedy of domestic manners is by turns funny, intensely emotional and deeply affecting.

Ealing's thirstiest comedy: "the longest unsponsored advertisement ever to reach cinema screens"?

Ronnie Corbett features in this quick-fire vintage classroom caper, featuring enough old jokes to fill a Christmas cracker factory.

Renoir's depiction of an intransigent society teetering towards disaster was derided upon release and only later acclaimed as one of cinema’s most vital films.

Yasujiro Ozu's cheerful comedy about the silliness of everyday chatter

Ozu's deft comedy takes an ironic look at the decline of paternal authority.

Ozu's silent masterpiece follows two brothers as they try to outwit the local bully.

The first screen outing for Goon Show stars Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe in a cheerful comic escapade set in Brighton.

A young Peter Sellers voices this compilation film of silent slapstick footage, featuring Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Laurel and Hardy.

Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan shine in a series of sketches and multiple roles, in this madcap mixture of music-hall and anarchic comedy.

Formidable physical comedy is the order of the day in this dynamic Chaplin short, in which he plays a waiter running rings around an angry customer.

One of Chaplin’s most famous early shorts finds the Little Tramp aboard a ship bound for America, mistakenly accused of being a pickpocket.

Chaplin sends up the movie business itself, playing a scene-stealing actor, David, in constant conflict with a tyrannical studio boss called Goliath.