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Otto; or Up With Dead People

By Adam Lippe

Sometimes a movie has absolutely no conceivable audience, and you feel like applauding it just for its existence, regardless of quality. Bruce LaBruce’s Otto; or Up With Dead People is a cheap mess, mixing his penchant for camp and gay porn, with zombies and avant-garde film references, not to mention film-within-a-film nonsense. Otto is clumsy […]

Angel

By Adam Lippe

The 1980’s was a decade that often had conflicting values, which were morally conservative, yet socially irresponsible. Nowhere was this better exemplified than with the way that the Grindhouse exploitation movies of the 70’s became unsubtly repressed in the 80’s, mixing beloved trash with fearful cautionary tales that punished pleasure.

Haute Tension

By Adam Lippe

Though this has been out overseas on DVD for a few months, this French slasher won’t get a US theatrical release until mid summer. Apparently Lions Gate has decided to go with an uncut NC-17 version (Note: it turned out they changed their minds) which is nice seeing as the blood and extreme gore is […]

Now on DVD and Blu-Ray

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.