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Looking for Mr. Goodbar, with bonus musical slideshow

By Adam Lippe

It was then. That doesn’t make it right. But that doesn’t make it different either.” – Comedian Greg Proops on why racist behavior in old movies shouldn’t be excused, but it shouldn’t make them worthless either.   The above quote is a canny way to explain away dated material without condemning it for being what […]

The Challenge

By Adam Lippe

It’s not that hard to imagine a young Steven Seagal, pre-ponytail, chins, and widow’s peak, thinking of himself as the most important crew member on the set of John Frankenheimer’s The Challenge. Hired to do the Akido stuntwork, Seagal could easily see himself as Scott Glenn’s lead character, the towering white American respectfully learning all […]

The Town

By Adam Lippe

When an actor with aspirations to become a director is on the set of a movie he regrets signing up for, does he use it as an excuse to learn what not to do? If it’s a film he does believe in, does he take mental notes on what he should be doing? Or is […]

Fearless Frank

By Adam Lippe

In the days where there were no such things as digital video and affordable cameras for the consumer, it must have been fun to work simultaneously without a net and on a low budget. That way, you could experiment with formats and ideas — even if they weren’t fully formed ideas — playing around with […]

Terrible Ideas Executed Superbly

By Adam Lippe

John Frankenheimer’s Dead-Bang has the most tired of all plots; beaten down, alcoholic cop (played by Don Johsnon), divorced and grizzled, gets yelled at by his superiors and screws up whenever he can. He runs down a ruthless criminal traveling from state to state trying to join with a well funded group of KKK members. […]

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)

By Adam Lippe

Someone should have combined this and Judge Dredd to combine two huge failures into one, and so Stallone could have battled the beasts in this film in who could say “I am the law!” less convincingly. I’m not sure what we’re supposed to care about when the two most interesting actors in the movie, Brando […]

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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.