TheRetroCritic

Based on the true story of polka band leader Jan Lewan, The Polka King is a new comedy released by Netflix starring Jack Black, Jenny Slate and Jason Schwartzman. The film follows the rise and fall of Lewan, who was convicted for running a Ponzi scheme in the early 2000's. Jack Black is in familiar territory here playing a likeable, well-meaning yet off-beat and troubled character based on a real person like he did in the underrated 2011 film Bernie . This story, however, isn't so much dark as it is fascinatingly ridiculous: the idea that a little-known Polish polka singer in Pennsylvania somehow convinced a lot of people to invest in him for years is so surreal that it's ripe for parody. Black could have easily turned this role into a Nacho Libre -style cartoon but, even though he puts on an impossible accent here, he still captures what made this guy so appealing to others and shows different sides to his personality. Most of the time, Lewan is friendly and generous

Back when I Heart Huckabees came out, critics didn't know what to make of it. Some loved it, some hated it with a passion, some didn't know either way. Like a cross between a Michel Gondry/Charlie Kaufman collaboration and a Coen Brothers screwball comedy, David O. Russell's film proved too odd for most people. I Heart Huckabees follows Jason Schwartzman's character, a depressed poet/environmentalist on a quest to discover the truth behind a bizarre coincidence. He hires the help of a couple of "existential detectives" (played to perfection by Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin) to help him figure all this out but the oddball detectives start getting maybe a bit too involved in his life. Jude Law plays Schwartzman's main antagonist, an insufferable douche who works for a company called Huckabees and who takes over his save-the-forest coalition for the sole purpose of making the company look good. Other players in this whole story include Law's airhea