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Ninja Assassin

By Adam Lippe

The big-budget version of an exploitation movie is fool’s gold. Sure, the filmmaker who could have used some more money to make his action sequences more convincing or get more than one take of any given shot is a worthy cause. But there’s scrappy charm in low-budget films and you forgive the mistakes as part […]

Quantum of Solace

By Adam Lippe

One of the most amusing things about the influx of Bourne-style action movies is that it puts the filmmakers in a peculiar bind. The Bourne films take themselves very seriously, but amidst their constant globetrotting (I’d imagine Jason Bourne manages to fill up even his fake passports with travel stamps), they tend to stay in […]

Shrivel Me Timber; Erotic Thrillers Vol. 1: Traces of Red

By Adam Lippe

If the idea of seeing Jim Belushi as a sex symbol isn’t appealing to you, then I don’t know what to say. Clearly Traces of Red is too good for you. As I detailed in the [Motor]Cycles of the Film Industry article, Hollywood does things in cycles. When the 1980’s teen sexploitation market dried up […]

Streetwalkin’

By Adam Lippe

Memories of a never was: Looking back on a long career of someone not even worthy of a ghostwriter By Randall Batinkoff Chapter 4 I spent that Thursday afternoon trying to convince my agent that I wasn’t Balthazar Getty.

Catwoman

By Adam Lippe

I have now taken in Crowwoman, and my first thought has to do with the fact that my theory that if the hair and makeup are thrown together and lazy, then the rest of the movie is likely to be too,  is absolutely correct. While the hair isn’t as atrocious as Godsend, the makeup is. […]

Monster’s Ball

By Adam Lippe

Spoilers everywhere…. There’s an odd linking of vomit going throughout Monster’s Ball that I think has never been addressed. Billy Bob throws up in the first scene, but nothing is made of it. It’s just part of the routine. It doesn’t even faze him. And this sort of establishes the way that the people in […]

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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.