Western

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 […]

Visitor Q

By Adam Lippe

The difference between the Farrelly brothers movies and Visitor Q is the difference between the necessity involved in slapstick gross out humor and darker black humor. Gross out humor requires that the characters have no self awareness of their situation, if they know exactly what’s going on, if Ben Stiller knew he had cum on […]

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

By Adam Lippe

Sometimes you see movies long after their influence has been felt and each scene has been ripped off to the point that everything in it has become a cliché. The Treasure of Sierra Madre appears to be constantly going in an interesting direction especially during its darker passages, but never quite commits. Is it that […]

2008 In Review

By Adam Lippe

A great premise can be tantalizing to a studio. A corporation only thinks about a way to sell its product, it is uninterested in its level of mediocrity, so a solitary, exciting idea sounds great in a 30 second ad. A writer knows better, realizing that the initial premise is only the starting point, you […]

Privacy Policy

By Adam Lippe

So here’s something not so useful for you to read, but that I’m legally obliged to write. Because of things like behavioral targeting, you might see ads on this site that reflect your interests or are frankly just annoying. You may feel free to ignore said advertising, but know that you’ve been made aware that […]

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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.