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MacGruber

By Adam Lippe

Those of us lucky enough to have seen Exhausted*, the 1981 John Holmes sycophant-umentary, may remember something the now world-weary director Julia St. Vincent, said on the DVD commentary. She described Holmes’ pursed lip expression during his moment of climax as one of his “monkey faces.” Now as the title character in MacGruber, the adaptation […]

Death at a Funeral (2010)

By Adam Lippe

When I was in college, I had to write a paper trying to explain why certain films were box office successes. It was 1998, and I surmised that the top 50 films as of the year’s end (in other words, final grosses were certainly not in by that point) were almost all formula; Buddy-cop, remake, […]

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day

By Adam Lippe

Is there any inherent pressure for a director when following up a failure, especially when you’ve made a sequel distributed by a studio that’s known for constantly releasing such fare? In the past few years, Sony has been putting out belated DTV sequels to the most random, unsuccessful movies in their back catalog; such as […]

The 18 1/2 Philadelphia Film Festival’s opening night film: Law Abiding Citizen

By Adam Lippe

As I said in my review of Year One, sometimes the way an actor or a director chooses to promote his new film on a talk show reveals all you need to know about the movie itself. Jamie Foxx, the star of F. Gary Gray’s new thriller Law Abiding Citizen, amidst the two segments (11 […]

Brüno

By Adam Lippe

The major reason that Freddy Got Fingered was such a failure had nothing to do with it being offensive or gross. If anything, the juxtaposition of Tom Green looking like a very plain, gee-whiz Canadian as he fellates a cow’s nipples is what makes him funny in the first place (especially on his original MTV […]

Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

By Adam Lippe

How does one review a movie where, by the opening credits, one of the main characters has delighted himself by jizzing on his own face? “The best scene of its kind since Shortbus!” I guess the only important question is if it is funny.

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.