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The Last House on the Left (2009)

By Adam Lippe

In 2002, there was a fascinatingly stupid idea given the green light, attempting to create a star vehicle for Madonna. Directed by then-husband Guy Ritchie, Swept Away is as bad as you may have heard, but interesting for a few reasons such as the fact that the movie is so impatient and jittery that it […]

Does your opinion matter? And since it doesn’t, will you like Hancock?

By Adam Lippe

As I’ve suggested in many of my reviews, Hollywood believes that the most important result from a film is a product – not necessarily entertainment, let alone art. Demonstrating this concept, a couple of recent films that were stripped down and spare to the point of absurdity, sometimes to their benefit, were The Incredible Hulk […]

2008 In Review

By Adam Lippe

A great premise can be tantalizing to a studio. A corporation only thinks about a way to sell its product, it is uninterested in its level of mediocrity, so a solitary, exciting idea sounds great in a 30 second ad. A writer knows better, realizing that the initial premise is only the starting point, you […]

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.