Horror

The Happening

By Adam Lippe

Those who complain about being tired of M. Night Shyamalan’s bag of tricks, twist endings, Spielbergian style and music, contrived plotting, and naïve characters who speak simplistic, dopey dialogue as they bask in the awe, amazement, and discovery of whatever horrible/amazing thing is happening to them, miss the point that most filmmakers don’t ever come […]

The Baby of Macon

By Adam Lippe

Peter Greenaway’s films are more divisive than virtually every other filmmaker working today. He has stated publicly that he is no longer interested in traditional ways of filmmaking, developing characters, telling a straightforward story, etc. Even the best experience I had with a Greenaway film, the sumptuous The Pillow Book, I left a screening with […]

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 […]

The award movies you’ll miss and the lowbrow fun you should have instead

By Adam Lippe

It appears that Vagina Dentata is all the rage. With 2007’s Teeth, and the recent Parasite Killer Pussy (not porn, but an incredible simulation!), as well as Penetration Angst, male paranoia mixed with misogyny is making a very welcome comeback. Tokyo Gore Police, from the same team that brought us last year’s whirlwind of wonderfully […]

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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.