Tag Archive

Escape From the Bronx [aka Bronx Warriors 2]

By Adam Lippe

You always know who the villain of any movie is going to be once you see a scale model. This guy envisions some future with all sorts of newfangled property and technology and he’s obviously hired someone to build this tiny replica of what’s on his mind. Now I can see how an architect might […]

Swimming to Cambodia

By Adam Lippe

I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the slam poetry appreciation party. The speed with which you speak has nothing to do with the profundity. I do not know how a show like Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam can garner seven seasons when the rhythms of each performer, regardless of […]

Limitless

By Adam Lippe

You’re always in trouble when you go high concept because it means, if you’re going to be fair to yourself, you shouldn’t take the easy way out and just pile on the clichés. What’s the point of having promise and then going through the motions anyway, considering you’re not interested in developing your own idea? […]

An interview with Patricia Neal, RIP.

By Adam Lippe

This interview originally appeared in Outlook, a newspaper in Columbus, Ohio, in April of 2008. Ms. Neal died yesterday of cancer. Husky-voiced actress Patricia Neal was born in Packard, Kentucky in 1926 and began her career in New York theater in 1946. She won the first Tony Award for best actress for her performance in […]

BearCity

By Adam Lippe

As gay films hit the mainstream in the early 90s, a valid topic for a movie was a 90-minute “coming out” story that always included acceptance from peers and parents by the conclusion of the film. Getting past these hurdles is important for any minority group. But once the shock of the group’s existence is […]

Here and There

By Adam Lippe

There tend to be two different ways that movies deal with any sort of American immigration. First there’s the white savior syndrome, wherein the noble but one-dimensional foreigner trying to get a green card is saved by a grumpy, cynical, but secretly angelic white city-dweller. And, as a result, they both learn to be better […]

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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.