For much of his career, Mel Brooks has had the peculiar distinction of being simultaneously ahead of and behind the times. Brooks’ singing Nazis and flatulent cowboys radically expanded the parameters of mainstream comedy. Yet when American films were addressing social turmoil like never before, Brooks used his clout to turn back the clock by combining silly sight gags, show-biz satire, silence, and celebrity cameos in 1976’s aptly named, ingratiatingly goofy Silent Movie. Brooks’ cheerfully crude oeuvre connects the dots between vaudeville and the gross-out gags of American Pie, between the brothers Marx and Farrelly (…) Anxiety is nearly as obsessive in recreating Alfred Hitchcock’s visual style as Gus Van Sant’s Psycho was, but to much greater effect. — Nathan Rabin