Bank Shot (1974)

 "I'm learning how to swim, and I'm coming after you!"

This is... well, it may not be the greatest comedy ever made, but it's a lot of fun. Silly heist films always are, and this one is literally about not just robbing a bank but stealing the entire wheeled edifice. As a high concept basis for a heist film, that's pretty impressive.

And George C. Scott is simply superb as the mildly world-weary and deadpan Walter Ballantine, genius heist planner who gets involved despite his better judgement with this highly unreliable motley crew.

But the film is equally carried by Clifton James as Bulldog Streiger, Ballantine's prison governor nemesis. Oh, and Ballantine's main underling is played by none other than Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard... 

There are some genuinely laugh out loud moments. This is, essentially, a farce. It's not so much a comedy of one liners as one of circumstance, with Ballantine being very knowing about the sheer existential absurdities of life, as displayed to perfection by the ending. The prison break early on is also a delight. And there are some delightful little clever comedic set pieces towards the end, as the gang are on the run with, yes, the whole bank.

This may be a fairly anonymous little heist comedy, but not every film has to bev the greatest of all time. If a film is entertaining, as this one is, then that's enough.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

"Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap."

This isn't the first time I've seen Dr. Strangelove, which is probably a good thing: this time I was able to look past the hilarious script and superb comic performances from, yes, Peter Sellers but the whole cast to Kubrick's superb direction and, perhaps, a slightly deeper context.

Still, it's worth emphasising that not only is this one of the funniest films ever but Sellers is utterly, utterly outstanding in all three of the parts he plays. Sterling Hayden deserves a mention, though, as does the utterly hilarious George C. Scott. And yet.... the Cuban Missile Crisis is less than two years ago and the film was made at what must have been the absolute peak of absolute nuclear annihilation. Strip away the comedy and this is a bleak and terrifying film (the concept of the Soviet doomsday device alone is existentially fearsome) which ends in absolute nuclear holocaust to the strains of Vera Lynn. And yet I think that both the humour and the underlying bleakness owe much to Catch-22 (the extraordinary novel: I haven't seen the film), another example of absolutely dark and horrible subject matter being leavened by a very mid-twentieth century absurdist style of humour which brings us back, again, to the existentialism which underpins this film, one of the greatest ever made.

Oh, and it's great, if weird, to hear the imperial tones of James Earl Jones in a film thirteen years before his signature role!