Comedy

I Really Wanted to Get Smart

By Adam Lippe

Wanton violence and nihilism is not always a bad thing. As with anything, it is entirely about tone. Having just finished watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, in all its studio-polished, R-rated glory – where the question of character deaths was not an “if” proposition, but rather a “when” – it became clear what […]

Cinematic Conventions

By Adam Lippe

I have always appreciated the way that Wet Hot American Summer makes fun of not just summer camp movies, which is an easy target, but many comedy conventions that have long been overused. Especially funny is the mocking of the sports movie, where they actually discuss all the clichés, from the ragtag losers who become […]

When They Shouldn’t Have Bothered

By Adam Lippe

The movie version of The Boys From Brazil, based on Ira Levin’s (Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives) novel is about Hitler’s doctor Joseph Mengele, trying, via an extremely complicated process, to bring about a second coming. While the story is very clever, and the plan was very detailed and intelligent, it was so convoluted and […]

Surrealism vs. Masturbation

By Adam Lippe

Robert Altman’s 3 Women is a movie often praised for its fascinating characters and trips into the surreal. Criterion clearly thought so and put in a great effort on the disc, the picture transfer is impeccable. This was also during Altman’s salad days (though Pauline Kael, a big Altman booster, always noted how he was […]

Taking the Yellow Out of the Yellow People

By Adam Lippe

Having watched Yasujiro Ozu’s Good Morning on DVD, I may have to turn in my snob card, or maybe I should get a special dispensation. Is it because I watched this movie in particular? No. It’s a gentle comedy on the surface, and a pretty rough criticism of Japanese culture underneath. This is because of […]

A Night of Too Many Nerds

By Adam Lippe

“No person is too ugly to have sex with… The next time you see an ugly person, I want you to put your hand on their shoulder and say, ‘Dammit, let’s have sex.’” – Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live A smart lady once wrote, “Nerds are just cool people with bad PR.” Being a […]

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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.