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He Never Meta Film Reference He Didn’t Like: A Review of Cop Out

By Adam Lippe

The late, great film critic Pauline Kael wrote that “an homage is a plagiarism that your lawyer tells you is not actionable.” Where do you draw that line though? When does gentle chiding and affection turn into parody? Certainly a film like last year’s Black Dynamite made that difficult to determine; because, while it tried […]

Gigli

By Adam Lippe

Wouldn’t it be easy to call it the worst movie ever made? The bandwagon already has a seat saved just for me, and it comes with a complimentary bong hit of conformity and acceptance. Does Gigli have anything to recommend in it? Not really. It’s an utter miscalculation, and as the movie goes on, it […]

Ishtar

By Adam Lippe

Long known as both one of the worst movies of the 1980’s and a perfect example of why stars who produce sometimes need to be held in check, Ishtar, written and directed by Elaine May, starring Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty (who also produced), is, like Gigli, a film which people have judged without seeing […]

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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.