Tag Archive

Submarine

By Adam Lippe

Did you know that kids, especially teenagers, use profanity on a fairly regular basis? One wouldn’t know that by watching films aimed at that demographic, considering the limitations of the PG-13 rating (where you can only say the F word once). The most accurate presentations of high school tend to be films that garner an […]

I’m Still Here

By Adam Lippe

Andy Kaufman was* hilarious. But only in retrospect. If you went to a comedy club and had to sit through one of his on-stage readings of The Great Gatsby, it’s a very reasonable response to heckle him and eventually leave. Such meta-commentary on the notion of entertainment and the expectation of a comedian performing for […]

A podcast with Going the Distance writer Geoff LaTulippe, potential egobursting ahead

By Adam Lippe

This podcast was a tough one. It’s an interview with the writer of Going the Distance, Geoff LaTulippe. Geoff wrote the original screenplay that was on the 2008 Blacklist (Up in the Air was also on it), which is a list of all of the best unproduced screenplays floating around Hollywood. I’ve read Geoff’s screenplay, […]

Going the Distance

By Adam Lippe

There are many critics who like to feign anger or moral outrage towards a movie. That’s purely an emotional reaction and not an intellectual one; the truth is that very few films are worthy of any sort of ire, it’s just a terrific way to get attention by piling on the derogatory snark. Exceptions do […]

Beeswax

By Adam Lippe

In Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, his adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s notoriously impenetrable novel, there’s a scene where Johnny Lee Miller’s character, Sick Boy, is heartbroken over the death of his child. All of the other heroin addicts in the room are stunned, staring at the dead baby. Sick Boy screams at Ewan McGregor’s character, Mark Renton, […]

Tenure

By Adam Lippe

One of the most damaging side effects of the current economic downturn, at least in the film business, is that a lot of the smaller films, often with a B level star as the lead, are utterly doomed. They used to get limited releases, opening in larger cities, and then if it made a breakthrough, […]

Now on DVD and Blu-Ray

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 [...]

Recent Reviews


Veegie Awards
Winner: BEST ONLINE FILM CRITIC, 2010 National Veegie Awards (Vegan Themed Entertainment)

Nominee: BEST NEW PRODUCT, 2011 National Veegie Awards: The Vegan Condom

Recent Comments

Archive

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.