Kiera Knightley Goes in a Different Direction For The Endearing Laggies

In the year 2014, you could see many unique sights on the big screen. A gun-toting raccoon with the voice of Bradley Cooper made his first foray onto the big screen. Rosamund Pike stabbed Neil Patrick Harris in the genitals. Tom Cruise got run over by a truck while trying to save the world. But perhaps the most unexpected and unusual sight of all came in the indie feature Laggies. Said sight was seeing Kiera Knightley not only in a movie set in the modern world but also playing a lady residing in Seattle, Washington! The queen of British period pieces traveling across the pond to play a struggling twenty-something, what a concept!

Lynn Shelton Embraces Awkwardness and Vulnerability in the Exceptional Comedy Humpday

For much of the history of American comedies, gay panic jokes were as standard of a source of comedy as sleeping on a banana peel. Just because they were ubiquitous doesn't mean they weren't harmful or unfunny. The rampant presence of gay panic jokes no doubt contributed to pop culture broader issue of normalizing the dehumanization and mockery of queer individuals, particularly between men. Throughout the history of cinema, though, plenty of great classic comedies have managed to generate yuks without restoring to a cheap trick like gay panic gags. Among such comedies was Humpday, Lynn Shelton's second directorial effort that, on paper, seems like it could have gone down a much more mocking path.