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The Boost

By Adam Lippe

James Woods was the best American actor of the 1980’s. What made his performances so interesting were not just his intensity, vitality, and believability, but that he often did it with a sub-par script and/or direction. For every Salvador and Videodrome, there was Cop, True Believer, and Best Seller. This even extended to his 90’s […]

Angels in America

By Adam Lippe

Angels in America is surprising in how it overcomes a facile ending and some ridiculously silly sequences (angels wrestling with each other) to remain generally moving and intimate. Emma Thompson’s dual performances as an angel and a NooYawk nurse were hammy, but Pacino and Justin Kirk, as the dumped AIDS infected lover walking around in […]

Good Night, And Good Luck

By Adam Lippe

Easily the best movie of 2005. Producer/Director/co-star George Clooney, in detailing Edward R. Murrow’s battle with Joseph McCarthy at the height of his power, takes so many chances for what could have been a very standard biopic/history lesson. Shooting TV broadcasts almost entirely in close-up, letting the power of the words take over allows the […]

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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.