Drama

An Unfaithful Wife

By Adam Lippe

It is rare that a flashy, sexed up American remake of a French film is so superior, but here is the prime example. What Adrian Lyne’s version, Unfaithful,  has in character development, pathos, introspection, believability, and the ability to relate to the characters, Claude Chabrol’s version has none of. Chabrol refuses to lay the groundwork […]

Dogville

By Adam Lippe

Amazing that Lars Von Trier has made the exact same movie three times and no one has noticed. Which film does this describe? A troubled yet innocent and angelic woman tries her best to do right by her family and her small town, but her innocence causes corruption and brings out the worst in everyone […]

Matchstick Men

By Adam Lippe

Decent showoffy performances, but not much of a movie around it. The final scene pays off more than it should, but honestly, I didn’t care that much. Nicolas Cage has more to work with than say Gone in Sixty Seconds, but a lot of this material shows up in other films all the time, from […]

Better Luck Tomorrow

By Adam Lippe

Hover to read the Context Just because your movie gets picked up MTV, who bragged about its first independent film acquisition, doesn’t mean you have to throw in distracting MTVish style into your story because you don’t believe you have original material. It was a shame about this, because I liked a few of the […]

Angels in America

By Adam Lippe

Angels in America is surprising in how it overcomes a facile ending and some ridiculously silly sequences (angels wrestling with each other) to remain generally moving and intimate. Emma Thompson’s dual performances as an angel and a NooYawk nurse were hammy, but Pacino and Justin Kirk, as the dumped AIDS infected lover walking around in […]

The Village

By Adam Lippe

You know, it’s clunky, the idea is kind of predictable, but I was spooked at times, and I always find M. Night’s films to be clever, if not always the day after viewing them. I’m glad what seemed to be the surprise was revealed at the beginning of act III, not the end. The concept […]

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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.