The 60 Best Black Comedies, Ranked By Tomatometer

Let’s say you’re the type to laugh while handling the darkest subject matters: Murder, doomsday, blackmail, and maybe even a lil’ tasty cannibalism. If so, twisted friend, you sure have arrived at the right spot to get your gallows guffaws: The 60 Best Dark Comedies, Ranked by Tomatometer!

All this dark material ranges in variation of glib macabre glee, different styles that we’ll touch upon in our selection of the best-reviewed funny black comedies. Most common are movies about murder and the subsequent covering-up, especially when the corpses have a habit of popping up at the most inconvenient times. Think Best Picture-winning Parasite, Fargo, Burn After Reading, and Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry.

Another style of the black comedy movie: Mining jokes out of political fallout when millions of lives are at stake, as seen in Dr. Strangelove, In the Loop, and The Producers. Or how about movies that get you on the serial killer’s side, like being on the ride for The Voices or Monsieur Verdoux. They twist you around enough to make you feel amusingly guilty hoping they’ll get away with it all.

The emergence of the black comedy movie seemed to come around in the 1940s, when filmmaking had evolved enough to artistically interpret real-world horrors (e.g. World War II) with mordant humor, as seen in To Be or Not to Be and Arsenic and Old Lace. Of course, how would they have known their groundbreaking path through the dark side would eventually come to the taboo of cannibalism, as seen in appetizing films like Delicatessen and Eating Raoul? And lest you assume we’re not in touch with our more subtle side when it comes to comedy of the damned, we’ve included philosophical destroyers Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf?, Carnage, and the brilliant Withnail and I.

Major players in the realm of dark comedies include status quo-defecating John Waters (Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos), Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Todd Solondz (Happiness, Welcome to the Dollhouse), and the devilish Danny DeVito (The War of the Roses, Ruthless People). Our final stipulation for their movies and everything else on the list is that each had to be rated Fresh, and have at least 20 reviews, to ensure enough critics have shared in the gleeful discomfort.

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad (feel free to keep adding more) world out there these days: Grab life by the ruffled lapel and throw it into the wood chipper with The 60 Best Black Comedies, Ranked!

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Also available this week:

• Life of Crime (66 percent), starring Jennifer Aniston and Will Forte in an ensemble caper comedy about a kidnapping gone awry when the corrupt land developer being squeezed decides he’d rather not pay the ransom.
• Zach Braff’s famously crowd-funded Wish I Was Here (46 percent), starring Braff and Kate Hudson in a dramedy about a thirtysomething man coming to grips with his adult life.
• James Franco’s Child of God (37 percent), starring Scott Haze and Tim Blake Nelson in an adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel about a Tennessee man whose life misfortune isolates him from society.
• Good People (12 percent), starring James Franco and Kate Hudson in a thriller about a couple in debt who discover a bag of cash and keep it, running afoul of the thief who stole it in the first place.
• The Prince (0 percent), starring Bruce Willis and John Cusack in a thriller about a retired assassin who jumps back into action when his daughter is kidnapped by his old rival.
• Shout! Factory is releasing the Complete Series of WKRP in Cincinnati for all you fans of classic sitcoms. The Emmy-nominated series, which ran from 1978-1982 and followed the eccentric staff at a struggling radio station, aired successfully in syndication for years after its cancellation.
• And lastly, two rereleases from the Criterion Collection: George Sluizer’s 1988 thriller The Vanishing (100 percent) is available in a new DVD and Blu-ray; and a DVD and Blu-ray box set of The Complete Jacques Tati, which contains all six of the French director’s films, including Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (100 percent) and Playtime (100 percent), as well as seven of his short films and a ton of special features.

In the latest adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel, Life of Crime, Jennifer Aniston talks about her character’s triumphs. John Hawkes discusses his history of hitchhiking, and Will Forte talks about his favorite way to set the romantic mood.

On screen, John Hawkes is something of a chameleon, looking completely at home on the dusty, swear-heavy roads of Deadwood, the raging seas of The Perfect Storm, the snowy fields of Winter’s Bone, or the emotionally complicated modern world of Me You and Everyone We Know. His beginnings in a rural community, as he points out a couple of times in this interview, got him used to the certain kinds of classic films that were readily available to him, and later set him up for some memorable experiences with different kinds of art. His list has both, and he would like for it to be known that he could easily pick five completely different films if I were to return in five more minutes and ask again, which I would have happily done.

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Life of Crime opens Aug. 29 in select theaters.

Click here for more Five Favorite Films.

Also opening this week in limited release:

• Starred Up, a British drama about an imprisoned teenager who attempts to change his life, is Certified Fresh at 98 percent.
• Patema Inverted, an anime about a princess who escapes from her staid underground life, is at 89 percent.
• Kundo: Age of the Rampant, a martial arts film about a group of bandits that rises up against the aristocracy, is at 86 percent.
• The Notebook, a drama about 13-year-old twins abandoned in a small village who bear witness to the violence and hypocrisy around them, is at 75 percent.
• The Congress, starring Robin Wright and Harvey Keitel in a half-animated, half-live-action fantasy about the movie business, is Certified Fresh at 73 percent.
• Canopy, a World War II drama about a pilot who’s been shot down in enemy territory, is at 71 percent.
• The Calling, starring Susan Sarandon and Topher Grace in a thriller about a serial killer who preys on the terminally ill, is at 64 percent.
• Jamie Marks Is Dead, starring Cameron Monaghan and Liv Tyler in a drama about the ghost of a teenager who visits some of his old classmates, is at 63 percent.
• Life of Crime, starring John Hawkes and Jennifer Aniston in a caper comedy about a man who refuses to pay the ransom for his kidnapped wife, is at 61 percent.
• The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears, a thriller about a man whose search for his missing wife leads to disturbing places, is at 45 percent.
• Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, a documentary about how photography helped to shape African American culture, is at 45 percent.
• Last Weekend, starring Patricia Clarkson in a comedy about a dysfunctional family that gathers at a summer cabin, is at 43 percent.
• The Last Of Robin Hood, starring Kevin Kline and Dakota Fanning in a drama about the last years of Hollywood swashbuckler Errol Flynn, is at 38 percent.
• The Damned, a horror film about a man who discovers a mysterious child in the basement of a remote hotel, is at 13 percent.