The Great Dictator (1940) and Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

The brilliance of satirical pitch and timing of  “The Great Dictator” – from Charlie Chaplin -- and “Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” – from Stanley Kubrick, and starring Peter Sellers – cannot be summed up here. These are worthy of books. I saw these war comedies near back-to-back and sat awed, not just at the performances of their lead actors, but the sheer balls that both projects demanded from their creators. “Dictator” takes on Hitler as a buffoon just as the Third Reich roared into terrifying power, while “Strangelove” lampoons a world where nuclear war was considered a sensible tool to save lives. We have nothing in our present day to compare these films and real fears, so there’s no use fishing for analogies. Chaplin’s movie follows a barber rattled by war and a ruthlessly idiotic dictator, while Kubrick’s tale follows a crazed general (Sterling Hayden) who sets off World War III, rattling the U.S. President and entertaining a mad ex-Nazi rocket scientist turned U.S. war scientist. Chaplin and Sellers are so amazing, it boggles the mind. Watching these classics now, it shows the dearth of comedies we have now in cinemas, “Grown-Ups 2”? No. A+

Iron Sky (2012)

“Iron Sky” has the greatest story pitch ever: Nazis from the dark side of the moon attack Earth using flying saucers. How crazy cool is that? Much of this Finnish-German-Austrian B-flick -– special effects, political satire aimed at American bravado and U.N. incompetence -- is hilarious fun, but there’s so much more that falls flat like a bad sci-fi version of “Springtime for Hitler” from “Producers.” Put bluntly, the trailer is better than the movie, the latter fumbled by flat acting and ugly stereotypes, as in all black youth pack Glocks. The gravest error: Great actor Udo Kier (“Suspiria”) plays the Fuhrer II, does nothing but die halfway in, replaced by a C-grade henchman. Why!?! The lead characters are a Nazi schoolmarm with clue zero; a black astronaut turned white by drugs; and a Sarah Palin clone as president who decorates the Oval Office with dead polar bears. Palin jokes were funny in 2009. Never funny: A Nazi scientist made to look like Einstein, a Jew who fled Hitler’s grip. “Sky” thinks its guns are as big as Tarantino’s “Basterds” and “Django” history remixes, but these barrels fire blanks. So much promise wasted. C+