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Scre4m [sensibly known as Scream 4]

By Adam Lippe

Charlie Kaufman’s screenplay for Confessions of a Dangerous Mind — his adaptation of Chuck Barris’ book about his dual professions of hosting The Gong Show and being an assassin for the CIA — is a lot different from the movie that the director, George Clooney, put together. Apparently, Kaufman was upset by the fact that […]

Drive Angry/Faster/My Soul to Take/I Spit on Your Grave (2010)

By Adam Lippe

When will disreputable nihilism become boring? Hopefully never. But there comes a point where self-satisfied nastiness taken to an extreme needs a little bit of flavor to distinguish itself. Patrick Lussier’s Drive Angry tries to spice things up with its effective use of 3D and by cobbling together as many exploitation clichés as possible: the […]

Sorority Row

By Adam Lippe

You know what might make an interesting frat house slasher movie? If they incorporated reverse gentrification instead of just the standard “rich bitches.” Imagine a sorority struggling to find funding, and as the economy dips further, so does the state of their house. They can’t afford a caretaker, they can’t even pay for clean water, […]

Skeleton Crew

By Adam Lippe

The easiest way for filmmakers to get themselves out of being painted into the corner is with a deus ex machina. Sometimes that deus ex machina is a lapse of logic, like Samuel L. Jackson driving on the highway and looking out his window at the exact moment Bruce Willis flies out of a water […]

Ishtar

By Adam Lippe

Long known as both one of the worst movies of the 1980’s and a perfect example of why stars who produce sometimes need to be held in check, Ishtar, written and directed by Elaine May, starring Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty (who also produced), is, like Gigli, a film which people have judged without seeing […]

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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.