Viktor Astafyev. Merry Soldier 

Airplane! (1980) is a fun spoof comedy with lots of laughs, right? I watched this film for the first time the other night. I loved it. Then came the racist jokes.

Naked Gun: The New Police Squad Team delivers exactly what fans want: relentless, expertly crafted chaos that honors the original while cranking everything up to eleven. The gags fire at machine-gun pace—sight jokes layered with wordplay and physical comedy so outrageous it borders on art. It's gleefully self-aware without being cynical, silly without being stupid, and maintains that perfect ZAZ-style balance of treating absolute absurdity with complete seriousness. The film knows exactly what it is: a comedy missile designed for maximum laughs, and it hits its target with surgical precision. Pure, unhinged entertainment that proves spoof comedy still has plenty of life left in it.

A throwback to the last months of the 20th century in this comedy film.

Sorry to Bother You ultimately speaks to the unfair advantages that the country’s power structures award to those with the resources to control others, as Lift’s easy access to the media allows his opinion to be the only one that matters in the eyes of the unsuspecting and easily impressed public. Moreover, it reveals the extent to which the American Dream has any true validity. It postulates how the promise of success and fulfillment as promoted by the American Dream more often than not leads to the undoing of the individual. Interestingly, in its revealing of the American Dream as merely a facade, Sorry to Bother You wisely questions whether or not anything can really be done to undo a system that has been accepted and in action for centuries.

Given a choice between a man and a mountain, it’s safer to choose the mountain.

It’s fun, it’s energetic, but it’s also understated and vicarial. Zola is a modern black fairytale and future of black movies.