Action/Adventure

Escape From the Bronx [aka Bronx Warriors 2]

By Adam Lippe

You always know who the villain of any movie is going to be once you see a scale model. This guy envisions some future with all sorts of newfangled property and technology and he’s obviously hired someone to build this tiny replica of what’s on his mind. Now I can see how an architect might […]

A podcast with Summer Qing [Qing Xu], co-star of Looper: Mandarin and English friendly version.

By Adam Lippe

Here is a podcast with actress Summer Qing (also known as Qing Xu), who plays the wife of Bruce Willis‘ character in Rian Johnson‘s twisty action sci-fi film Looper. Summer’s role is the main motivation for Willis’ entire journey through time. Summer was also in a few Chen Kaige films, like Farewell, My Concubine, and […]

Rad

By Adam Lippe

If Reckless, the Romeo and Juliet-style vehicle for Aidan Quinn and Daryl Hannah contains the most overtly sexual high school dance sequence in all 1980s teen films (with the pair ogling each other to the sound of Romeo Void’s Never Say Never featuring the all too subtle lyric, “I Might Like You Better if We […]

Nicolas Cage and the Temple of Contractual Obligation

By Adam Lippe

When my girlfriend and I moved to Columbus, Ohio, we did not have much time to find a place to live. We settled on a location that was converted from a post office to a building full of large lofts. The apartment was huge, but it had quite a few deficits. There were no lights […]

Dragged, Kicking and Screaming to Answer Year-End/Best of 2011 Questions

By Adam Lippe

I am not a fan of year-end lists. They are entirely reductive and self-congratulatory. However the text below was triggered by another critic, Examiner.com’s Jason Roestel, who asked me to contribute to his year-end piece. So this is a version that fixes as many grammatical errors as I originally had, as well as some significant […]

A Bittersweet Life

By Adam Lippe

Back in the mid-1990s, when gay cinema was just coming out of the closet and into the mainstream, there was a charming, formulaic lesbian comedy called The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Girls in Love. There’s nothing particular special about the film and I can’t face watching it again, since there’s no doubt, with its […]

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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.