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An Unfaithful Wife

By Adam Lippe

It is rare that a flashy, sexed up American remake of a French film is so superior, but here is the prime example. What Adrian Lyne’s version, Unfaithful,  has in character development, pathos, introspection, believability, and the ability to relate to the characters, Claude Chabrol’s version has none of. Chabrol refuses to lay the groundwork […]

L’Enfer

By Adam Lippe

L’Enfer threatens to have a more interesting backstory than the film itself. Originally written by director Henri-Georges Clouzot (Diabolique) in 1964, Clouzot made several attempts to make the film, but always had problems with the structure, and needlessly elaborate fantasy sequences. Thirty years later, Clouzot’s widow sold the script to a producer, who offered it […]

Dark Water

By Adam Lippe

Hideo Nakata (Ringu, Chaos) is an extremely talented director, who thrives on creating dread inducing atmosphere out of simple elements. And when he is working on the mystery rather than the revelation of the story, the movie works very well. Nakata clearly storyboards all of his shots in advance, each frame seems to be taken […]

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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.