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Redwoods

By Adam Lippe

There aren’t a lot of flaws in Doug Liman’s Swingers. The humor and insight into heterosexual insecurities and arbitrary rules is just as insightful nearly 15 years later, which is a credit to writer/star’s Jon Favreau’s script. But if there’s one distracting element, it’s a scene where Favreau blows a potential one night stand because […]

The Hangover

By Adam Lippe

There’s a famous scene in Doug Liman’s Swingers that is the key to understanding the entire career of The Hangover director Todd Phillips. As Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn go on a midnight venture in Swingers, driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in an attempt to salve their wounds as failed actors and lotharios, […]

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 […]

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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.