Action/Adventure

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 […]

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 […]

Double Team

By Adam Lippe

Incoherent for 80 minutes. And then there’s the ending. Producer Moshe Diamant is responsible for bringing three great directors from Hong Kong to the US and giving them increasingly shitty Van Damme vehicles to make. John Woo made Hard Target. Ringo Lam made Maximum Risk. Tsui Hark (who is a better producer than director) made […]

Collateral

By Adam Lippe

Despite Michael Mann’s expertise on the film “look,” the HD video Collateral was shot on looks exquisite, and is just right for the material. If there was one thing I liked about Mann’s Ali, it was the fights, and the way they were photographed, an almost 3-D effect of being there. Mann manages to similarly […]

Can a live action cartoon be watchable?

By Adam Lippe

During a recent viewing of the insufferable Kung Fu Hustle, I was struck not by the plotlessness, the odd and meaningless insertions of homophobia (one character is continuously ridiculed for being a “fairy,” each time they call him that he does a little dance and exits frame, nothing ever comes of it), or the complete […]

Bad Boys II

By Adam Lippe

Bad Boys II is bad for all the expected reasons, terrible script (from Ron Shelton (?!), didn’t he make Bull Durham and Tin Cup?), wanton, pointless violence and a disregard for human life proudly unsurpassed (it is easy to criticize the scene where cadavers are being dropped on the highway but why they stole from […]

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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.