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Burn! – Uncut

By Adam Lippe

If we’re to believe the point of view of the Dr. Mengele doppelganger in the recent revenge-on-the-Nazis thriller The Debt, then the SS believed that the reason the Jews were the perfect victims was because they were not going to fight back. Not that they weren’t strong people, but that they believed in self-preservation. To […]

Looking for Mr. Goodbar, with bonus musical slideshow

By Adam Lippe

It was then. That doesn’t make it right. But that doesn’t make it different either.” – Comedian Greg Proops on why racist behavior in old movies shouldn’t be excused, but it shouldn’t make them worthless either.   The above quote is a canny way to explain away dated material without condemning it for being what […]

Gravehopping

By Adam Lippe

During my first year of college, when I was still a film student, I met a Spaniard, also in the film program, who bragged about not watching any movies. “I don’t want to have any outside influences,” he said. I tried explaining the notion of parallel thinking; my senior year of high school I wrote […]

Lisztomania

By Adam Lippe

There’s a famous story about how Paddy Chayefsky, screenwriter of Network, who had it in his contract that none of the dialogue that he wrote for Altered States could be changed. That presented a problem for any director brave enough to tackle the speech and science heavy material and still assert themselves on the set, […]

The Tree of Life

By Adam Lippe

Is there a significant difference between getting your money’s worth and getting too much? In terms of moviegoing, there’s two ways of dealing with that thought; Since you’ve paid, you have to get as much as you can out of the experience. Or, since you’ve paid, it’s your time and your money, and torturing yourself […]

Reflections in a Golden Eye

By Adam Lippe

The alcohol lobby used to be much more powerful. Now they can only advertise at certain times on TV. Of course, with the stigma of drinking now attached to the notion that alcoholism is a disease; it’s certainly less glamorous to get publically plastered, and more likely to have you wake up on an episode […]

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.