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Lookin’ to Get Out vs. Lookin’ to Get Out: Revisionist History Vol. 1

By Adam Lippe

David Fincher’s Alien 3 is the best example of a very flawed film that was improved in a longer version, while still retaining all of those very same flaws. The theatrical cut, running just under two hours, has very little character development. And, therefore, apart from Sigourney Weaver’s character, Ripley, doesn’t make you care about […]

Year One

By Adam Lippe

It doesn’t happen often. But sometimes you can tell how stale and unfunny a comedy is going to be just from the marketing alone. I’m not referring to the TV ads and trailers, which take bits out of context, often changing their meaning and humor value. I mean situations where a cast member shows up […]

Once Upon a Time in Mexico

By Adam Lippe

“That, my friend, is cowardice. It’s so yellow. It’s not even yellow, it’s beyond yellow. It’s canary yellow… Rodeo clowns, on the other hand, those are real men. I had a buddy from Austin, he was a rodeo clown. He had one arm. We used to call him, uh… One arm.” – Johnny Depp, at […]

The Exorcist III: Legion

By Adam Lippe

Given the choice, I would make Exorcist III a short film, dropping the second half. Why? Because the first 40 minutes or so, while we are learning about the Gemini killer, and while there is a lot of quick witted, rapid fire, screwball comedy style dialogue between Scott and the priest who likes It’s A […]

American Wedding

By Adam Lippe

American Wedding is kind of an anti-achievement because it seems to insist that it’s much dumber than it should be. Since these movies are just sitcoms with vulgarity, there is little to be distracted by. The first film was guilty of stopping the movie dead in order to set up the gross out jokes, which […]

Transporter 2

By Adam Lippe

After watching Transporter 2, a movie so non-sensical and ridiculous, that you can’t help but laugh every few minutes as it piles up the absurdities, I couldn’t help but think about what a friend of mine once said about action movies. “80% of it has to be believable; they can have the other 20%. Anything […]

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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.