Tag Archive

Portishead: PNYC

By Adam Lippe

In July of 1997 , the British band Portishead, who up until then had released two terrific records, Dummy and a self titled album, played at Roseland, a famous New York City venue. That a live album was released was always kind of a surprise to me, Portishead does not play the kind of music […]

Shaolin Soccer

By Adam Lippe

In 1997, when ownership of Hong Kong was returned to China from the United Kingdom, more than a transfer of land took place. Many filmmakers and actors, who sensed the upcoming political change, had already left to pursue careers in the US where they anticipated they would have more freedom to make the kinds of […]

Chopper

By Adam Lippe

The filmed version of legendary Australian criminal Mark “Chopper” Read’s semi-autobiographical book, is, along with Fight Club, one of the best unreliable narrator movies ever made. Read’s “novels” are extremely popular in his native land, as they concern his own criminal history, although, apparently there is no way to tell the difference between what is […]

Amelie: Or how by writing a review on the three different versions I bought, I can write it off on my taxes.

By Adam Lippe

That Amelie is vacuous, blindly optimistic, without meaning, nor about anything in particular did not stop it from being the second best movie screened in the US in 2001 (the best was far and away Battle Royale, which still has no distribution). Stuffed with so many bizarre and wonderful ideas as to shame Being John […]

Tesis

By Adam Lippe

Though it is thought of as a necessity in a horror movie or a “thriller,” there is no real reason, apart from a lack of creativity, why characters must act in an unintelligent manner in order to find themselves in threatening situations, thus providing thrills for the audience. It’s more insulting than anything else and […]

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.