Comedy

A Podcast with Michael Cera and Portia Doubleday

By Adam Lippe

Here’s an audio interview conducted in a room full of reporters with Youth In Revolt stars Michael Cera and Portia Doubleday. While all 15 of us got to ask 2 questions each*, there were a plethora of tangents that had nothing to do with the movie (yes, Cera would be interested in an Arrested Development […]

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

By Adam Lippe

For a long time, the cheapest place to shoot a movie was in Canada, often in Vancouver. Virtually every movie that was supposed to take place in New York City would be comprised of a few aerial shots of Manhattan and then any external scenes would be shot in close enough where you couldn’t identify […]

The Men Who Stare At Goats

By Adam Lippe

No matter what you think of Saw as a film, it’s hard to deny that the guys who made it, James Wan and Leigh Whannell, are geniuses. Not that they’re all that talented, as a feature film Saw is derivative, badly acted, and needlessly convoluted. What differentiates Wan and Whannell from standard exploitation filmmakers (torture […]

Local Anesthetic: Film Festivals Part IV

By Adam Lippe

“We want to show movies that won’t be seen at the local mallplex,” drunkenly exclaimed Harlan Jacobson, the artistic director of the 18 ½ Philadelphia Film Festival and a film community legend. It was awkward enough being a film critic at an invite-only party taking place at an upscale club. No matter how you try […]

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day

By Adam Lippe

Is there any inherent pressure for a director when following up a failure, especially when you’ve made a sequel distributed by a studio that’s known for constantly releasing such fare? In the past few years, Sony has been putting out belated DTV sequels to the most random, unsuccessful movies in their back catalog; such as […]

Hollywood Air Force

By Adam Lippe

The late comedian Mitch Hedberg, in one of his more perceptive, addled observations, pointed out how multi-tasking is not solely a requirement of office work, but falls under Hollywood’s expectations as well: “As a comedian, I always get into situations where I’m auditioning for movies and sitcoms, you know? As a comedian, they want you […]

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Roadracers

By Adam Lippe

Whenever there’s a genre parody or ode to a specific era of films, such as Black Dynamite’s mocking of Blaxploitation films or Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, the second half of Grindhouse, the danger is that the film might fall into the trap of either being condescending without any particular insight, or so faithful that it becomes the very flawed thing it is emulating.

Black Dynamite has nothing new to say about Blaxploitation films, it just does a decent job of copying what an inept [...]

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Featured Quote (written by me)

On Cold Fish:

Though the 16 year old me described the 1994 weepie Angie, starring Geena Davis as a Brooklyn mother raising her new baby alone, as “maudlin and melodramatic,” Roger Ebert, during his TV review, referring to the multitude of soap-operaish problems piling up on the titular character, suggested that it was only in Hollywood where Angie would get a happy ending. “If they made this movie in France, Angie would have shot herself.”

Well Cold Fish was made in Japan, where Angie would have shot herself and that would have been the happy ending.