What Comedy Movies to watch on Criterion Channel

Babe Stewart is a card cheat who has to go on the lam to avoid a pesky cop. He meets a lonely, but slightly wild, librarian, Connie Randall, while he is hiding out. The two get married after Connie wins a coin flip, and they move back to the city. Babe continues his gambling/cheating scheme unbeknownst to Connie. When she discovers his "other life", she pressures him to quit. Babe feels crowded and tells her that he is leaving for South America. In fact, he has decided to go straight and turns himself in to the cop.

Fausto Moretti seduces his friend Moraldo Rubini's sister Sandra and is forced to marry her After their honeymoon, he takes a job selling religious objects in a small shop. Marriage doesn't change him; he still goes with his friends to look for women. He even tries to seduce his boss' wife and gets fired. Sandra forgives everything he does. He and his friends of similar temperament are content to be idle, chase girls, and leave the job-hunting and work to others. After Fausto has spent one more night away from home with a girl, Sandra can no longer forgive and runs off with their child, and Fausto and his friends search all over for them, fearing the worst.

Tycoon John Glidden, dying but still vigorous, is so dissatisfied with his relatives and associates that, rather than will his money to any of them, he decides to give it away in million-dollar amounts to strangers picked from the city directory. He picks a meek china salesman, a prostitute, a forger, two ex-vaudevillians who hate road hogs, a condemned man, a mild-mannered clerk, a boisterous Marine, and an oppressed inmate of an old ladies' home.

After realizing that all world is spoiled, blond Marie and brunette Marie are committed to be spoiled themselves. Their life motto is: Nothing is bad as long as you are having fun. They rip off older men, feast in lavish meals and do all kinds of mischief. But what is all this leading to?

An odd film that primarily looks at how the dole affects the underclass in Britain. Tim Roth stars as Colin, a slow and possibly intellectually-disabled man living with his parents and brother in a housing project. He and his sarcastic manipulative brother still behave like teenagers--living with their parents, harassing each other. The problem is that they are in their late teens or twenties. Neighborhood characters include Hayley, a young woman with a crush on Colin, and Coxy (Gary Oldman), a violent local skinhead who befriends Colin. Trouble ensues when their wealthy aunt gives Colin a job and his brother becomes jealous.

Waterfront couple raise their son to be a sea captain. He grows up to be rather snotty and rebels against drunken Beery. Valiant Dressler keeps things moving even as hubby ruins their tugboat business. Dressler dotes on his son and his snooty girlfriend.

Kresten learns of his father's death and travels to the ruined family farm. With a highly suspicious wife, a nutty brother in his garden, old enemies in the farmyard, and a gorgeous woman in his bedroom, Kresten's problems begin for real...

Enlisted during the First World War, Charlie discovers the hard life of the trenches and the dangers of combat. Synopsis courtesy of MK2 and Warner Bros.

Ayako becomes the mistress of her boss, Mr. Asai, so she can pay her father's debt, and prevent him from going to prison for embezzlement. She also sends money for her brother, Hiroshi, to pay his university tuition, but asks her father not to tell him that it is from her. She tricks Mr. Fujino into giving her money so that she can marry her boyfriend Nishimura, but Fujino calls in the police.

After their last production meets with less-than-stunning reviews, the relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan is strained to breaking. Their friends and associates attempt to get them to work together again, which opens the way to The Mikado, one of the duo's greatest successes.

Harold Guppy (Rupert Graves) moves into the Beasley household as a lodger. Before long Mrs. Marjorie Beasley (Dame Julie Walters) falls for him and eventually ends up in his bed. Her thirteen-year old daughter Joyce (Laura Sadler) is aware of what is happening and threatens to tell Mr. Stanley Beasley (Matthew Walker) unless she is also allowed share the bed with Harold and "Mum". "Mum" seems to think there is no harm in this, as long as Joyce doesn't take part in the physical activities. Harold gets caught up in a web of deceit and blackmail, and each time he tries to break free of the grasp of "Mum", she threatens to tell the Police that he has been abusing Joyce. This movie continues much in this line, and it examines the effect of the relationship on both Harold and Joyce and how they are both driven to extreme action because of the influence of Mrs. Beasley.

A lone prospector ventures into Alaska looking for gold. He gets mixed up with some burly characters and falls in love with the beautiful Georgia. He tries to win her heart with his singular charm.

Buster gets word that if he can be married by seven o’clock that evening, he will inherit $7 million. When his sweetheart refuses, he proposes to everyone in skirts, including a Scotsman! Hopeful still, he advertises for a bride and is horrified to discover five hundred would be brides hot on his trail in a hilarious chase to the finish.

Marty "Alfred Molina" is a jazz musician, always a precarious source of livelihood even for the best-known performers. In this film, he is just barely getting by, living on the outskirts of a run-down town populated by Irish immigrants. Though this might be called a highly successful life for a jazz musician, it is hardly satisfying. He hangs out a bar called The Rose of Sharon and is friends with its irrepressible barmaid, Sheila "Maggie O'Neill". When Sheila introduces Marty to the ghostly inhabitants of a rocking chair, they embark on a series of adventures that result in satisfaction for all concerned - except for the bar's owner, who killed one of the ghosts "Marianne Faithfull" when she was among the living.

One of the most acclaimed films of this year's Sundance Film Festival, Azazel Jacobs' third feature is both a tribute to his parents (and to the lost New York of his childhood) and an acutely perceptive, deeply personal take on a universal experience: the fear of growing up.

Poor Charlie lives in a vacant lot. He tries to get a job but when he gets to the head of the employment line the jobs are gone. Back "home" he rescues Scraps, a bitch being attacked by other strays. Together they manage to steal some sausages from a lunch wagon. They enter a dance hall where Edna is a singer and unwilling companion to the clientele. He is thrown out when he can't pay. Back "home" Scraps digs up a money-filled wallet buried by crooks. They return to the dance hall to find Edna fired. The wallet goes back and forth between Charlie and the crooks. Charlie, Edna and Scraps end up very happily.

Involuntarily-retired Lieutenant Colonel Hyde recruits seven other dissatisfied ex-servicemen for a special project. Each of the men has a skeleton in the cupboard, is short of money, and is a service-trained expert in his field. The job is a bank robbery, and military discipline and planning are imposed by Hyde and second-in-command Race on the team, although civilian irritations do start getting in the way.

The lives of an ex-con, a coffee-shop owner, and a young couple looking to make it rich intersect in the fictional and hypnotic Rain City.

Young drifter Tom Skelton returns to his home in Key West, Florida and attempts to open a fishing charter business, provoking a dangerous feud with rival fishing sea captain Nichol Dance.

Actress Judy Carroll, from the gas-house district has been trained, educated and developed so well by her manager, that not even the publicity-seeking world of the theater has guessed her antecedents. But she has not loved well or wisely as she learns when she tries to adopt a baby.

Sir Guy Grand adopts homeless bum Youngman to be heir to his obscene wealth, and immediately begins bringing him into the intricacies of the family business, which is to prey upon people's greed by use of the vast holdings of the Grand empire. They leave no stone unturned as sporting events, restaurants, art galleries, and traditional pheasant hunts turn into lurid displays of bad manners and profiteering. Things climax at the social event of the season, the inaugural voyage of the new pleasure cruiser, "The Magic Christian".

Bloomington, Minnesota, 1967: Jewish physics lecturer Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a serious and a very put-upon man. His daughter is stealing from him to save up for a nose job; his pot-head son, who gets stoned at his own bar-mitzvah, only wants him round to fix the TV aerial and his useless brother Arthur is an unwelcome house-guest. But both Arthur and Larry get turfed out to a motel when Larry's wife Judy, who wants a divorce, moves her lover Sy into the house and even after Sy's death in a car crash they are still there. With lawyers' bills mounting for his divorce, Arthur's criminal court appearances, and a land feud with a neighbor, Larry is tempted to take the bribe offered by a student to give him an illegal exam pass mark. And the rabbis he visits for advice only dole out platitudes. Still God moves in mysterious---and not always pleasant---ways, as Larry and his family will find out.

The family of a Parisian shop-owner spends a day in the country. The daughter falls in love with a man at the inn, where they spend the day.

In a mythical Japan, Ko-Ko, a cheap tailor, has been appointed Lord High Executioner and must find someone to execute before the arrival of the ruling Mikado. He lights upon Nanki-Poo, a strolling minstrel who loves the beautiful Yum-Yum. But Yum-Yum is also loved by Ko-Ko, and Nanki-Poo, seeing no hope for his love, considers suicide. Ko-Ko offers to solve both their problems by executing Nanki-Poo, and an agreement is reached whereby Ko-Ko will allow Nanki-Poo to marry Yum-Yum for one month, at the end of which Nanki-Poo will be executed, in time for the arrival of the Mikado. But what Ko-Ko doesn't know is that Nanki-Poo is the son of the Mikado and has run away to avoid a betrothal to an old harridan named Katisha. The arrival of the Mikado brings all the threads of the tale together.