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Shank

By Adam Lippe

Opening with a coke-filled clandestine Internet hook-up in the woods, quickly followed up with a painful headbutt, Simon Pearce’s Shank successfully treads the line between sweet romance, gay soft-core porn, gang violence, and aimless exploitation. The combination of all of these elements is the only way the movie is unique; otherwise, it’s just a coming-out […]

An interview with Lynn Shelton, the director of Humpday

By Adam Lippe

Lynn Shelton, the director of Humpday (review and podcast here), was supporting her movie and I got a chance to pester her in person. Humpday is about two friends from college, now older. Ben (played by one of the credited pioneers of the Mumblecore movement, writer/director of The Puffy Chair and Baghead, Mark Duplass), is […]

Public Enemies

By Adam Lippe

It’s quite the bold move to deliberately make your movie an eyesore. This is especially true when you’re someone like Michael Mann (Heat, Manhunter, Collateral), who is known specifically for his unique visuals. His new film, Public Enemies, is shot on video, and not in the same way that a lot of new movies are […]

Outrage

By Adam Lippe

Kirby Dick’s last film, This Film is Not Yet Rated, had a wonderful premise, exposing the hypocrisy and discrimination of the MPAA, the movie ratings board, by comparing sex scenes that were deemed acceptable for a mass audience, white and straight, vs. very similar content with black and/or gay couples, which were not. Using a […]

Otto; or Up With Dead People

By Adam Lippe

Sometimes a movie has absolutely no conceivable audience, and you feel like applauding it just for its existence, regardless of quality. Bruce LaBruce’s Otto; or Up With Dead People is a cheap mess, mixing his penchant for camp and gay porn, with zombies and avant-garde film references, not to mention film-within-a-film nonsense. Otto is clumsy […]

Kakuto

By Adam Lippe

Opening with a short animated sequence (done in the style of Waking Life) which suggests that we are beginning at the end, as several people are up to something mischievous and running away from some horrible crime, Kakuto cheats the viewer by pretending, at any moment that the real story will begin. The voiceover during […]

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 [...]


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

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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.