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Knight and Day

By Adam Lippe

He looks aghast at the poster for the party. I Sold My Mom’s Wheelchair. “Dance music for old people?” It’s the moment that John Cusack’s character in Stephen Frears’ High Fidelity realizes that this poster is being used to promote a band he just signed, and the party and album title will be one he’s […]

A podcast with Alexis Spraic, the director of Shadow Billionaire

By Adam Lippe

Here’s an audio interview I did with Alexis Spraic, the director of Shadow Billionaire, a movie without a distributor at the moment, that I reviewed here. We talk about how hard it must be to profile her subject Larry Hillblom, DHL magnate and procurer of young Vietnamese and Filipino virgin girls, in an objective fashion, […]

Shadow Billionaire

By Adam Lippe

The laziest thing about biopics is that they tend to neglect establishing what’s so special about their subject matter, simply because they happen to be about a famous person. The abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock, who had an acclaimed film made about his life in 2000, Pollock, starring and directed by Ed Harris, may have […]

Whiteout

By Adam Lippe

Do you ever wonder what goes on during meetings about theatrical release dates for movies? Well, I know you don’t, but just whose idea was it to open the violent 3 hour exploitation pastiche/parody Grindhouse on Easter weekend? “We have an opening in April; do we have anything to fill it?” “Which weekend?” “Easter.” “Hmmm. […]

Knowing How To Punish Your Audience

By Adam Lippe

In 1991, a masterpiece of excess was unleashed around the world. Initially, it was a cult item, its greatest claim to fame was that a clip from the film, Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, was featured as the introduction to the Five Questions segment on The Daily Show, back when Craig Kilborn was hosting. The […]

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.