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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 […]

Whiteout

By Adam Lippe

Do you ever wonder what goes on during meetings about theatrical release dates for movies? Well, I know you don’t, but just whose idea was it to open the violent 3 hour exploitation pastiche/parody Grindhouse on Easter weekend? “We have an opening in April; do we have anything to fill it?” “Which weekend?” “Easter.” “Hmmm. […]

Lookin’ to Get Out vs. Lookin’ to Get Out: Revisionist History Vol. 1

By Adam Lippe

David Fincher’s Alien 3 is the best example of a very flawed film that was improved in a longer version, while still retaining all of those very same flaws. The theatrical cut, running just under two hours, has very little character development. And, therefore, apart from Sigourney Weaver’s character, Ripley, doesn’t make you care about […]

Up

By Adam Lippe

Do you like hearing kids screaming and parents rushing their children out of the theater never to return? Me too. Listening to the questions of the young ones surrounding me, as the opening montage comprised of miscarriages and cancer progressed (“why is she crying?”) made Up quite a distinct experience, and a delightful one at […]

Me and Him

By Adam Lippe

True film connoisseurs are eminently familiar with the later works of director Bob Clark, when he took a right turn from his popular early horror and exploitation titles like Black Christmas and Porky’s and chose to follow in the footsteps of his classic A Christmas Story by exclusively exploring the younger market. His most notable […]

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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.