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The Expendables

By Adam Lippe

Do you remember 200 Cigarettes? You know, the ‘80s nostalgia-fest about the ultimate New Year’s Eve party being thrown by Martha Plimpton, and the various vignettes involving those who will end up at said party? The 1999 film where Kate Hudson spends a lot of the movie covered in dog poop, Christina Ricci and Gaby […]

The Missing Person

By Adam Lippe

It’s a shame that Hollywood is only interested in making origin films for the heroes of comic book films. Such is the case with the recent X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Frankly, the heroes tend to be dull. And so, while there are some aberrations—such as with Lexi Alexander’s campy, silly, and ridiculously entertaining and colorful Punisher: […]

Big Fan

By Adam Lippe

If Taxi Driver is considered the last movie word on how loners slowly lose their grip on reality and devolve into misguided violent martyrdom, where do those without the gaul or stones to engage in violent activism fit in? Surely, there’s more of the type too timid or scared to act on their fantasies, otherwise […]

The Marc Pease Experience

By Adam Lippe

The best examples of movies that use product placement as plot points are Tsui Hark’s Double Team which amongst other things, has our heroes hide behind a Coke machine, protecting them from certain death and Alexander Payne’s Election, where Matthew Broderick, because he is staring at a can of Pepsi, is able to deduce that […]

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 […]

Once Upon a Time in Mexico

By Adam Lippe

“That, my friend, is cowardice. It’s so yellow. It’s not even yellow, it’s beyond yellow. It’s canary yellow… Rodeo clowns, on the other hand, those are real men. I had a buddy from Austin, he was a rodeo clown. He had one arm. We used to call him, uh… One arm.” – Johnny Depp, at […]

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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.