Comedy

The Art of Inertia

By Adam Lippe

Watching The Station Agent, you fear it will be one of those overpraised independent movies admonished at festivals, but really a bunch of spare parts taken from various movies about a colorful small town, often with a “diverse” ethnic slant. However, the movie was extremely funny, and reminded me of the kinds of films that […]

The Anti-Auteur, Michael Winterbottom

By Adam Lippe

As versatile as Steven Soderbergh and just as willing to take chances, if not more so, Michael Winterbottom has made some of the worst movies of their era (The Claim, Wonderland), and some of the most interesting and entertaining as well (24 Hour Party People, Welcome To Sarajevo). Since 1995, he has made 17 feature […]

Buffalo ’66

By Adam Lippe

Vincent Gallo dared to put a truly irritating character in the center of the film, unsympathetic in so many ways, mix it with deadpan humor and surrealism (such as the beautiful Ricci dance at the bowling alley), deliberately over the top acting such as Ben Gazarra and Angelica Huston as his parents, shot the film […]

Leave the Cults to the Scientologists

By Adam Lippe

“Attention Wal-mart shoppers: Pink Flamingos is on sale this week for just $9.99 and if you buy it today, courtesy of our promotions department, at check-out, you’ll receive a complimentary pooper scooper and bib.” In the late winter of 1995, at a low-rent theater on the lower east side of Manhattan, I snuck into a […]

Leonard Part 6

By Adam Lippe

Certainly the greatest film ever made, at least of those featuring Jane Fonda and killer tunas that read Playboy. The Cos reached the pinnacle of his career with this, one that he proudly produced, co-wrote the story, and picked up several awards for his efforts. Only Martin Short’s masterpiece, Clifford, could ever be considered as […]

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

By Adam Lippe

If there’s one thing we can count on from Will Ferrell, it’s completely committing to a role. Anchorman is really funny when it is only concerned with its own silliness, but like most comedies, once the plot or story arc kicks in, the laughs dissipate, even if the tone doesn’t particularly change. This usually arrives […]

Now on DVD and Blu-Ray

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.