Funny Ha Ha: 2015's Best Comedies

L.A. WeeklyCulture

Chi-Raq is a marvel. It's [Spike] Lee resurrecting his voice — angry, impassioned and funny as hell — right when we need to hear it. He opens the film with a rap that's like an incantation to the gods. 'Please pray 4 my city,' Cannon pleads, and the screen fills with statistics: In the last 15 years, 2,379 Americans have been killed in Iraq. In that same period, 7,356 — three times more — have been killed in Chicago alone. (Perhaps instead of 'Chi-Raq,' a weary diss even to the characters in the film, the fairer insult is to call Iraq 'Ira-Go.')" —Amy Nicholson; Credit: Courtesy of Roadside Attractions">Chi-Raq
Chi-Raq
"Chi-Raq is a marvel. It's [Spike] Lee resurrecting his voice — angry, impassioned and funny as hell — right when we need to hear it. He opens the film with a rap that's like an incantation to the gods. 'Please pray 4 my city,' Cannon pleads, and the screen fills with statistics: In the last 15 years, 2,379 Americans have been killed in Iraq. In that same period, 7,356 — three times more — have been killed in Chicago alone. (Perhaps instead of 'Chi-Raq,' a weary diss even to the characters in the film, the fairer insult is to call Iraq 'Ira-Go.')" —Amy Nicholson; Credit: Courtesy of Roadside Attractions

The year's best knee-slappers came from all across the globe: a murder-mystery miniseries made in France, an ancient Greece-inspired look at Chicago's gun-violence epidemic, an old-school vampire flick from New Zealand. Though many of these films' subject matter was grisly, the execution was nuanced enough to remind us that laughter is indeed the best medicine.

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