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The Men Who Stare At Goats

By Adam Lippe

No matter what you think of Saw as a film, it’s hard to deny that the guys who made it, James Wan and Leigh Whannell, are geniuses. Not that they’re all that talented, as a feature film Saw is derivative, badly acted, and needlessly convoluted. What differentiates Wan and Whannell from standard exploitation filmmakers (torture […]

Drag Me to Hell

By Adam Lippe

Any actor willing to look foolish on camera should be cherished for their surprising lack of shame. Since acting is almost entirely about insecurity, ego, and validation, someone willing to forgo all of that “for the good of the project” is a rare find. The king of this fearlessness is undoubtedly Kurt Russell, who enthusiastically […]

Leatherheads

By Adam Lippe

George Clooney’s insistence on playing the strapping buffoon lead is both refreshing and tiresome. Leatherheads is clearly inspired by his roles in the Coen brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty and O’ Brother Where Art Thou?, where he mixed double-take style kitchen sink slapstick, with movie-star charm and Cary Grant-like smugness. This is an odd idea, considering these […]

Good Night, And Good Luck

By Adam Lippe

Easily the best movie of 2005. Producer/Director/co-star George Clooney, in detailing Edward R. Murrow’s battle with Joseph McCarthy at the height of his power, takes so many chances for what could have been a very standard biopic/history lesson. Shooting TV broadcasts almost entirely in close-up, letting the power of the words take over allows the […]

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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.