What’s Playing At The Movies This Weekend?

by Kevin Burton

   “Do you want to see a movie?” my wife Jeannette will ask me, thinking of  a fun diversion. “What’s playing?” I will ask.

   “I don’t know,” she will say, exasperated.

   “If I don’t know what’s playing, how do I know if I want to go?” I will say, as if I have landed on the “pragmatic” square in life’s great board game.  “I have to trade two hours of my life for this…..”

   She is thinking of date night, the outing, the shared experience, the atmosphere, the popcorn, even.

   Yes, popcorn is a must, and you will eat it, even if the evening is dinner and a movie and you are full. You will still eat at least some of the popcorn.

   I used to think like she does. I used to love to go to the movies. Now it has been maybe three years since we went out to a movie theatre.

   Our movie nights these days involve seeing what is available for free on Amazon. Carol Burnett or Laugh-In re-runs are at the top of our list. We love music documentaries too. And yes, we will make popcorn at home.

    But have you ever had popcorn at home that tasted as good as movie theatre popcorn?

    But public events such as movies now bring with them risks, risks greater than spilling Dr. Pepper on your best jeans, or your best girl. You know what I am talking about.

    These were my thoughts when I found a list of movie categories, put together by Merriam-Webster dictionary.  Grouping films into genres is useful for movie critics and may be interesting for others.

   Whatever the genre, I’m hoping to learn a little something from a movie, to take something more valuable than leftover popcorn home.

   Here is the dictionary’s list:

1–Spaghetti Westerns

   We’ll start off with one we all know: The nickname of “Spaghetti Westerns” arose in the 1960s when low-budget Westerns were produced in Italy by directors such as Sergio Leone. Easy: linking the genre to Italy’s most famous export (pasta).

   Most were shot in the arid landscapes of Spain and Italy, but dressed up as the American frontier. They gave us those unforgettable Ennio Morricone soundtracks and Clint Eastwood squinting under the sun in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

2–Noir

   After WWII, an outpouring of dark, shadowy, morally bleak American crime films flooded the world. They resembled hardboiled detective novels in both tone and style. French critics coined the term film noir—literally “black film”—to describe them.

   Dark alleys, femme fatales, pervasive cynicism, and the constant sense of danger lurking just out of sight all help define the noir atmosphere.

3–Sword and Sandal

   This campy label—sometimes used mockingly—was applied to Italian-made historical epics packed with gladiators, togas, mythological heroes, sprawling battle scenes and, of course, sandals. The genre is also known as Peplum, from the Greek word peplos (a type of tunic).

4–Mumblecore

   Okay, this one’s a slightly mocking label for earnest but low-budget indie films. These movies often feature a naturalistic style, with awkward or even unintelligible, mumbled dialogue—especially in early directorial debuts.

   Some critics call this style “mumblecore,” though others prefer the more respectful catchall of indie film.

5–Kaiju

   In Japanese, kaiju literally means “strange beast,” but Western audiences quickly translated it to one word: monsters. The most iconic example is Godzilla, which first appeared in the 1950s.

   Over time, the term came to describe films in which colossal creatures battle humanity—or each other—while wreaking havoc on cities.

6–Slapstick

   Slapstick is comedy at its loudest and clumsiest. We usually associate it with the great silent-era stars Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd.

   But what does the name mean? These banana-peel-humor films are named after a real theatrical prop: the “slap stick,” a pair of wooden boards hinged together and used on stage to produce a loud smacking sound.

7-Biopic

   It’s a very popular genre nowadays, and the name is pretty self-explanatory. “Biopic” is a portmanteau of “biographical” and “picture.”

   Though many of us can think of great hit movies like Ray or Bohemian Rhapsody, the term itself is anything but new. It was first recorded in the 1940s and later popularized by studios as a marketing shorthand for dramatized life stories.

8–Kitchen Sink Drama

   In Britain during the late 1950s and 1960s, critics began referring to a wave of gritty plays and films as “kitchen sink dramas.”

   These works focused not on glamour or escapism, but on the tough, often claustrophobic realities of working-class life. The label came from the way the action frequently unfolded in the most unromantic of settings: the kitchen sink.

9–Screwball Comedy

   The 1930s and ’40s gave us a unique brand of American romantic comedy: fast-talking, chaotic, absurd, and charming. Critics borrowed a baseball metaphor to name it: screwball, a pitch that veers unpredictably.

   These comedies thrived on unexpected twists, rapid-fire dialogue, and mismatched couples who sparred their way into love. Think It Happened One Night and Bringing Up Baby as textbook examples.

10–Mockumentary

   A portmanteau of “mock” and “documentary,” the word itself is as cheeky as the genre it describes. Coined in the 1960s and popularized with the rise of films such as This Is Spinal Tap (1984), the term signals a fake documentary made for comic or satirical effect.

   The format has since become a staple of modern comedy, shaping series like The Office and Parks and Recreation.

11–Giallo

   The word simply means “yellow” in Italian. The color became associated with crime and mystery because of the widespread, inexpensive paperback novels with yellow covers published in Italy in the 1920s. As these novels were adapted into films, the color extended to stylized Italian thrillers.