Tag Archive

Where the Wild Things Are

By Adam Lippe

I really can’t draw. If there was ever proof of this, it was in college when I was taking a video production course and amongst all of the other little things that went into the writing, editing, directing, and organizational elements, we had to do storyboards. It is wishful thinking on a student production that […]

Bad Blood

By Adam Lippe

That NC-17 rating sure is tantalizing. It will draw you into watching the most routine and uninteresting films. What could the ratings board have objected to so strenuously as to mark a film unacceptable for anyone but adults? Why are movies like the relatively tame Bank Robber or Teenage Bonnie and Klepto Clyde voted verboten […]

Away We Go

By Adam Lippe

There’s an undiagnosed illness that most people don’t know about. But it can affect their personalities completely. Away We Go, Sam Mendes’ (American Beauty, Revolutionary Road) new comedy-drama about a couple (John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph) going through their first pregnancy and how they travel all across the country to try to find the best place […]

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 […]

Spellbound (2002)

By Adam Lippe

For several years, I watched the National spelling bee competitions on ESPN, and they were so nerve-wracking that I had to take breaks every 40 minutes or so. It was a combination of watching these kids suffer, the pressure their parents must place on them, the fact that they no doubt get teased mercilessly in […]

Observe and Report

By Adam Lippe

Usually, when a director misreads his film and the audience reaction is the opposite of what is intended, it means he’s made a drama that’s ineffective enough that it has become comedy. In the case of the new Seth Rogen vehicle Observe and Report, writer/director Jody Hill has made what he thinks is a comedy […]

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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.