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The Other Guys

By Adam Lippe

Screaming non-sequiturs at the top of your lungs will only get you so far in life. If you’re Will Ferrell, it can get you a financially successful, but poorly made, one-note comedy like Stepbrothers. The fatal flaw of Step Brothers is that Ferrell and John C. Reilly spent their time bellowing profanity at each other […]

The Hangover

By Adam Lippe

There’s a famous scene in Doug Liman’s Swingers that is the key to understanding the entire career of The Hangover director Todd Phillips. As Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn go on a midnight venture in Swingers, driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in an attempt to salve their wounds as failed actors and lotharios, […]

Napoleon Dynamite and its ilk

By Adam Lippe

Few movies make me actually angry for people falling for the condescending crap being thrown at them, but Napoleon Dynamite manages it. It’s not just that there’s no point to the film. It’s just so self conscious and so deliberate in its attempts to be “weird” and retro. Traits are established for the characters and […]

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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.