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A podcast with Billy Corben, director of Cocaine Cowboys, Raw Deal, Square Grouper, and The U

By Adam Lippe

Below is an interview with director Billy Corben, who made the two Cocaine Cowboys films, Raw Deal, Limelight, Square Grouper (his new documentary about pot smuggling in Florida, which he happened to be promoting at the time of this interview), and The U, which is relevant now since its subject is Miami University’s football team, […]

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 […]

Tyson

By Adam Lippe

Objectivity, while not the most important ingredient in a documentary, still should not be ignored. Tyson, director/gambler/narcisist James Toback’s portrait of his longtime friend former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, flatters itself with what it thinks is brutal honesty, but in fact has no more depth than a puff piece on Entertainment Tonight. If Toback (Two Girls and a […]

California Split

By Adam Lippe

Here’s the idea behind “A Canadian, an American, and an Elitist”: Rhett’s favorite movie is Meatballs 4,  Shawn has an unhealthy fixation on Resident Evil, and Adam is a prick who hates everything. We all watch far too many movies, and spend our time analyzing them. So we each watch the same movie, write our […]

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 [...]

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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.