Sci-Fi

Ultraviolet

By Adam Lippe

Minimalism is treated by the public in different ways, depending on the subject matter. With Phillip Glass, his music has been little more than a variation on the same theme for nearly thirty years, and yet is cited as a genius. With Jim Jarmusch, his spare, droll films, such as Stranger than Paradise and Down […]

Cypher

By Adam Lippe

Miramax has a tendency to produce medium budget sci-fi and horror films and right before they are about to be released, they put them back in the vault for six months, so all of the momentum disappears, and then dump them into a few hundred theaters, with no promotion behind it. Recently this has happened […]

Beyond Re-Animator

By Adam Lippe

Very disappointing. The charm of the first two films is in the humor and the amusingly low budget effects that “interact” with the cast. There is one creature in the opening sequence of Beyond Re-Animator, a rather uninspired one at that, and nothing else for about 75 more minutes after having to suffer through a […]

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 Matrix: Reloaded

By Adam Lippe

  Watching The Matrix: Reloaded, one has to say that it was a good thing the movie was basically pre-sold. There is a fundamental problem with the enterprise, that I don’t think interested the Wachowski’s anyway. Since the idea behind these films is to attempt to obscure the meaning with overy complex language to give […]

The Butterfly Effect

By Adam Lippe

Sometimes director’s cut DVDs are a waste of time and a simple marketing scheme. I watched the director’s cut of The Butterfly Effect and then watched the conclusion of the theatrical cut, and am mystified how anyone can even consider the latter’s ending to be valid. The director’s cut’s conclusion seems thematically correct, as it […]

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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.