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Bullet in the Head

By Adam Lippe

A filmmaker like Larry Clark puts a viewer in a tough spot. When watching a movie like Kids, Bully, or Wassup Rockers, are we to believe that Clark has perfectly portrayed the aimlessness and idiocy of bored, wayward teenagers in search of a good time? Or is Clark just lazy himself, and he simply hasn’t […]

Bad Blood

By Adam Lippe

That NC-17 rating sure is tantalizing. It will draw you into watching the most routine and uninteresting films. What could the ratings board have objected to so strenuously as to mark a film unacceptable for anyone but adults? Why are movies like the relatively tame Bank Robber or Teenage Bonnie and Klepto Clyde voted verboten […]

Double Team

By Adam Lippe

Incoherent for 80 minutes. And then there’s the ending. Producer Moshe Diamant is responsible for bringing three great directors from Hong Kong to the US and giving them increasingly shitty Van Damme vehicles to make. John Woo made Hard Target. Ringo Lam made Maximum Risk. Tsui Hark (who is a better producer than director) made […]

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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.