Drama

Life During Wartime

By Adam Lippe

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and you imitate yourself, does that mean you’re flattering yourself too? Catherine Breillat, a director often accused of taking herself too seriously while trying to punish the audience, tried to pull off this self-flattery thing with her 2002 film Sex is Comedy, which mocked her infamous 2001 […]

Valhalla Rising

By Adam Lippe

It would make sense that creating a brutal, no-brainer medieval movie, with tons of clanking swords, stabbings, bludgeoning, grunting, and minimal dialogue would be simple and not require either a big budget or a level of acting above say, the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Cyborg. You’d be wrong of course; otherwise there would be much […]

BearCity

By Adam Lippe

As gay films hit the mainstream in the early 90s, a valid topic for a movie was a 90-minute “coming out” story that always included acceptance from peers and parents by the conclusion of the film. Getting past these hurdles is important for any minority group. But once the shock of the group’s existence is […]

A Podcast Q&A with John C. Reilly, star of Magnolia, Chicago, Stepbrothers and the new film Cyrus

By Adam Lippe

Here’s a podcast q&a with the star of the Duplass brothers’ new film Cyrus, John C. Reilly. The interview was held after a Philadelphia screening of Cyrus. There’s nothing mindblowing about the questions, they cover the expected topics like working with Will Ferrell, Marisa Tomei, and the differences between playing comedy and playing drama. However, […]

A Podcast with Roger Nygard, the Director of Trekkies, Suckers, and his new documentary The Nature of Existence

By Adam Lippe

Here’s a podcast with Roger Nygard, the director of Trekkies, Trekkies 2, High Strung (w/Steve Odekerk and Jim Carrey), Back to Back: American Yakuza 2, Suckers, and his new documentary The Nature of Existence. This hour long podcast covers such topics as how to sell your movie in Japan by adding a vs. to the […]

Beeswax

By Adam Lippe

In Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, his adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s notoriously impenetrable novel, there’s a scene where Johnny Lee Miller’s character, Sick Boy, is heartbroken over the death of his child. All of the other heroin addicts in the room are stunned, staring at the dead baby. Sick Boy screams at Ewan McGregor’s character, Mark Renton, […]

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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.