Film
Fort Tilden
Fort Tilden is a jagged, uncomfortable comedy about two aimless Brooklyn twentysomethings trying to bike to the beach and failing spectacularly. It's cringe-inducing and deliberately unglamorous, finding humour in entitlement colliding with reality. For anyone who's winced at themselves or their friends—the ones who mean well but have no idea how the world actually works.
If you liked this
Tiny Furniture2010
Lena Dunham's debut has the same vibe: privileged millennial dysfunction, awkward sex, New York claustrophobia, and a refusal to make anyone likeable. It's messy and real and funny in ways that sting.
But The pacing is deliberately slack and nothing really resolves. If you want plot momentum or character growth, you'll be frustrated.

Greenberg2010
Ben Stiller as a depressed, dysfunctional fortysomething adrift in LA. Noah Baumbach's script is acid about privilege and arrested development, with long stretches of people just sitting in their own failure.
But Stiller's character is genuinely hard to like and the film doesn't soften that for you. It's bleak in a way that can feel punishing.

Trainwreck2015
Amy Schumer's film finds humour in female self-sabotage and the specific comedy of women who refuse to grow up. It's messy and brash and doesn't apologize for its characters' bad choices.
But The tone shifts between cringe comedy and earnest romance. Some jokes don't land and the film occasionally tries too hard to be likeable.

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The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Greasy Strangler2016
Both are comedies built on failure and entitlement, but this one drains all the hope and replaces it with body horror and dread. Same root, completely different temperature.
Junk food and surrealism collide in Jim Hosking's deranged comedy about a father-son flea market duo. It's grotesque and bewildering and utterly committed to its own madness. Same DNA of aimlessness and dysfunction, but warped into nightmare.
But It's genuinely gross and the pacing is deliberate to the point of torture. The film seems to take pleasure in making you uncomfortable.

More like this (8)
Girls2012
Four Brooklyn women in their twenties navigating privilege, sex, and total incompetence at adulting. The comedy is uncomfortable, the characters are awful sometimes, and that's the entire point.
But The show runs for six seasons and loses some of its edge as it goes on. Early episodes are sharper than later ones.

Drinking Buddies2013
Joe Swanberg's mumblecore about two coworkers in a will-they-won't-they that goes nowhere satisfying. Improvised, messy, focused on the small failures of communication and desire between people who never quite connect.
But Not much happens and the dialogue is deliberately naturalistic to the point of feeling aimless. If you want a tidy three-act structure, keep moving.

Betas2013
A short-lived comedy about three guys trying to launch a startup in Silicon Valley. It nails the specific desperation of privileged people convinced they're visionaries, failing at everything.
But It only lasted one season and for good reason—the show never quite finds its footing and the characters are exhausting without being particularly funny.

Broad City2014
Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer as two millennial women causing chaos across New York. Absurd, smart, genuinely hilarious, with the same blend of entitlement and haplessness.
But The show gets broader and bigger as it goes on. Early episodes are weirder and more character-based than later seasons.

Under the Silver Lake2018
David Robert Mitchell's paranoid comedy-mystery about a directionless LA guy stumbling into conspiracy. It's visually rich, surreal, and obsessed with privileged incompetence confronting a world that doesn't care about it.
But The plot is deliberately obtuse and the film doesn't answer its own questions. It's willfully obscure in ways that some viewers find infuriating.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping2016
Lonely Island's mockumentary about a vapid pop star and his desperately loyal friends. It's absurd and trashy and genuinely committed to making fun of people with more money than sense.
But The humour is broad and silly. If you want something with bite and edge, this swings for easy targets.

Dames1934
Both are about capable women undone by circumstance and their own poor choices, but where Fort Tilden is anti-glamorous and uncomfortable, this one sings its way through the same failure.
Pre-Code Hollywood musical in which two showgirls scheme and fail and scheme again. Same structure as Fort Tilden—women trying to get somewhere, complications mounting, nothing working out. But it's a musical, so even failure is gorgeous.
But You have to accept 1934 Hollywood glamour and pace. The musical numbers are elaborate and the plot is paper-thin. It's not trying to be realistic.

My Winnipeg2008
Fort Tilden is a comedy about people too undone to escape Brooklyn; My Winnipeg is an essay about a man too broken to escape Winnipeg. One's a scrappy indie comedy, the other's a formal art film, but both trap their protagonist in geography and psychology.
Guy Maddin's autobiographical essay-film about a man unable to leave his hometown because he's too damaged and paralyzed by memory. It's in black-and-white, it's experimental, it has Maddin narrating like a documentary about his own mental paralysis. Similar comedy of entrapment.
But This is experimental avant-garde cinema. If you want conventional narrative or even conventional documentary, this will frustrate you immediately.

People
Cast
Bridey ElliottHarper
Clare McNultyAllie
Alysia ReinerCobble Hill Mom
Neil CaseyEbb
Peter VackBenji

Reggie WattsReggie Watts
John EarlyJohn
Evan Hoyt ThompsonGrant- Desiree NashMarin
Becky YamamotoAmanda
Directing
- Charles RogersDirector
- Sarah-Violet BlissDirector
Writing
- Charles RogersWriter
- Sarah-Violet BlissWriter
Production
- Allison TwardziakCasting
- Geoff MansfieldProducer
- Mollye AsherProducer
- Devin LandinUnit Production Manager