Drama

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 […]

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 […]

Au Hasard Balthazar

By Adam Lippe

Here’s the idea behind “A Canadian, an American, a Lawyer, and an Elitist”: Rhett’s favorite movie is Meatballs 4,  Shawn has an unhealthy fixation on Resident Evil, Richard scoffs at anything that isn’t pretentious and hoity toity, and Adam is a prick who hates everything. We all watch far too many movies, and spend our […]

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 […]

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 [...]


Veegie Awards

Winner: BEST ONLINE FILM CRITIC, 2010 National Veegie Awards (Vegan Themed Entertainment)

Nominee: BEST NEW PRODUCT, 2011 National Veegie Awards: The Vegan Condom

Recent Comments

Archive

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.