Film

Keeping Company

A 1940 domestic comedy that follows newlyweds navigating early marriage while the bride's well-meaning parents hover nearby. It's a gentle, warm film about the small frictions of shared life—nothing scandalous, everything relatable. Made for anyone who enjoys watching ordinary people bumble through ordinary happiness with charm and good humour.

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like gentle domestic comedy where the friction comes from in-laws who mean well and newlyweds who are learning to share a kitchen, not from villains.

Skip it if you need sharp edges or a story that moves quickly, since this is a gentle, old-fashioned film whose jokes are small and whose stakes stay modest throughout.

What it asks of you: It runs a brisk eighty minutes and wants you to settle into its lightly tangled household rather than chase a plot, so attention can drift and come back without cost.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

It Happened One Night1934

The template for American romantic comedy: a couple bickers their way across a country and into each other's hearts. Smart, fast, and endlessly charming, with real chemistry that makes the banter sing.

But It's 90 years old and moves at screwball speed. If you need plot to drive you forward, some of the verbal jousting may feel like delay rather than delight.

It Happened One Night poster

Breakfast at Tiffany's1961

Audrey Hepburn in the role she was born to play, navigating New York and her own contradictions with style and unexpected tenderness. A film about the gap between who we want to be and who we actually are.

But It's slighter than its reputation suggests. The ending has aged poorly in some of its racial assumptions. It may feel more like decoration than substance on first viewing.

Breakfast at Tiffany's poster

Bringing Up Baby1938

Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in a screwball fever dream where a leopard, a bone, and pure combustive chemistry destroy everything orderly in sight. Endlessly inventive and genuinely hilarious.

But The pacing is relentless and the plot nonsensical. If you prefer your comedy grounded in recognisable reality, this will feel like watching someone's fever dream.

Bringing Up Baby poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Keeping Company

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Marty1955

Both films understand that the real story is in the texture of ordinary life—how two people fit together, how families collide, how the very small stuff is actually everything.

A 54-minute drama about an ordinary butcher in the Bronx looking for love and finding it with an equally ordinary woman. It won Best Picture by being precisely about the small, unglamorous moments where lives actually happen. Proof that ordinariness can be utterly absorbing.

But Nothing happens. No plot machinery, no spectacle, no moment where you can point at the screen and say 'there's the drama.' If you need incident, it will bore you.

Marty poster
More like this (8)

Easter Parade1948

A song-and-dance film where Fred Astaire and Judy Garland dance through romance and rivalry with warmth and musical brilliance. The numbers are genuinely delightful, the story sweetly uncomplicated.

But It's a musical, so if dance sequences feel like interruptions to you rather than attractions, this won't work. The plot is gossamer-thin and knowingly so.

Easter Parade poster

You Can't Take It with You1938

Frank Capra's Oscar winner about a chaotic, creative, generous family that shows what happens when capitalism meets people who refuse to play the game. Funny, warm, and genuinely moving about what wealth really means.

But It's deeply sentimental and wears that sentiment proudly. The message about money and happiness is laid on thick. It can feel quaint to modern eyes.

You Can't Take It with You poster

The Egg and I1947

Claudette Colbert as a city woman adapting to rural Washington and a cranky husband (Fred MacMurray). A sharp-eyed look at marriage and compromise, funny without ever being mean.

But The pacing sags in places. The rural life being civilised is not the most original conflict. It's nice more than it is brilliant.

The Egg and I poster

My Favorite Wife1940

Cary Grant returning home to find his wife (Irene Dunne) has come back from being shipwrecked—and she's not exactly the devoted housewife he expected. Sharp dialogue and genuine sexual tension wrapped in the period's propriety.

But The premise relies on old-fashioned assumptions about marriage roles. Some of the comedy lands harder than others. It's more clever than warm.

My Favorite Wife poster

The Philadelphia Story1940

Cary Grant, James Stewart, and Katharine Hepburn circling each other before a wedding. Sparkling dialogue, genuine emotional stakes beneath the sophistication, and three leads who make every scene sing.

But The wealth on display is vast and unexamined. The ending tidies things up in ways that feel slightly false. It's very much a product of its era.

The Philadelphia Story poster

State of the Union1948

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn as a married couple whose personal life becomes collateral damage when he runs for president. A domestic comedy that's also genuinely interested in politics and principle.

But It's overstuffed and tries to do too much. The political material can feel dated and earnest. It never quite settles into one tone.

State of the Union poster

Barefoot in the Park1967

Same central question: can two people from different worlds build a life together, and is it the disagreements or the laughter afterward that proves it's real?

Robert Redford and Jane Fonda as newlyweds in a tiny New York apartment, arguing and laughing about money, class, and whether it's okay to do things barefoot. A bridge between generations; it feels modern while staying in love with romance.

But It's entirely plot-lite. If you're expecting conflict resolution, you won't get it. Very much a couple's film; if you're single, some of it may feel exclusionary.

Barefoot in the Park poster

Minari2021

A family film in the truest sense—not made for children, but about the specific, tender negotiations of family life, and how love is often expressed in practical, unglamorous acts rather than declarations.

A Korean-American family buys land in Arkansas to start a farm. It's ostensibly about immigrant aspiration, but really it's about how marriage, parents, and children negotiate what home means when everything is uncertain. Gentle, precise, heartbreaking in the smallest ways.

But It's very quiet and moves at its own pace. There's no dramatic resolution to speak of. If you need closure, this will frustrate you. Entirely in Korean and English.

Minari poster

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