Drama

Black Swan vs. Black Swan: Revisionist History Vol. 2, A Screener’s Revenge

By Adam Lippe

As a critic, my job is to be as objective as possible while acknowledging my own subjectivity. But what rarely comes into play, at least consciously, is whatever mood I might be in on the way into the theater. I saw Black Swan at the opening night of the Philadelphia Film Festival on October 14th. […]

A podcast q+a with Danny Boyle and an audience q+a with Danny Boyle

By Adam Lippe

Here’s both a roundtable q+a with 127 Hours director Danny Boyle and an audience q+a recorded after a screening the night before the roundtable was held.  There’s a bit of overlap in the 50 total minutes (20 for roundtable, 30 for audience q+a) but considering the audience q+a (which is moderated by Philadelphia Inquirer critic […]

A podcast with Sam Rockwell, Tony Goldwyn, and Betty Anne Waters on the film Conviction

By Adam Lippe

Here’s a podcast about the film Conviction with star Sam Rockwell, director Tony Goldwyn, and subject Betty Anne Waters. [You can read a review of the film here.] While this may seem like a normal roundtable podcast, it is not. This is because I recently got a complaint from another reporter that I was using […]

Truth or Friction: Film Festivals Part V

By Adam Lippe

Few things will put you more in a position to question your level of maturity than covering a film festival. Shouldn’t I enjoy my medicine by burying myself in high minded dramas on important subject matter and dry documentaries that detail the struggles of a trendy third world country? What kind of an adult would […]

Really, I’m fine with you watering it down: Part II: Blue Valentine, A Film Unfinished, and Red

By Adam Lippe

Continued from here: Sometimes the watering down of a movie is not from within, but the film gets punished for its honesty and direct emotion. Such is the case with Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine which received a bewildering NC-17 from the MPAA for, well, because Michelle Williams has a realistic orgasm on screen. The MPAA […]

Really, I’m fine with you watering it down: Part I: 127 Hours and Conviction

By Adam Lippe

If, according to screenwriter William Goldman (The Princess Bride, All the President’s Men), “In Hollywood, nobody knows anything,” then why is there always the need to taper off the intensity (read: effectiveness) of a movie in order to make it more palatable to a mainstream audience? Marketing is admittedly guesswork, and with the right evidence, […]

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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.