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Hamlet 2

By Adam Lippe

There are few things more obnoxious than a satire that keeps nudging you to remind you it’s only kidding. Hamlet 2, which is like if Waiting For Guffman were played as a straight comedy instead of as a documentary, and made sure to remove anything remotely funny, panders and plays it safe to the point […]

Adventureland

By Adam Lippe

Selling nostalgia is a tricky thing. While you already have the advantage of being able to tap into people’s hazy memories and playing off their vague recognition and familiarity, you risk relying on such a lazy device to the point where you become guilty of The Wedding Singer syndrome, wherein the entire purpose was to […]

The Amityville Horror (2005)

By Adam Lippe

While the movie made almost no impression on me whatsoever, I kept getting the feeling that the most annoyed potential viewer will not be anyone who worships the original (which I have not seen), but rather, Paul W. Anderson, director of Event Horizon, which used to hold the record for the most loud noise scares […]

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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.