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Really, I’m fine with you watering it down: Part I: 127 Hours and Conviction

By Adam Lippe

If, according to screenwriter William Goldman (The Princess Bride, All the President’s Men), “In Hollywood, nobody knows anything,” then why is there always the need to taper off the intensity (read: effectiveness) of a movie in order to make it more palatable to a mainstream audience? Marketing is admittedly guesswork, and with the right evidence, […]

The Art of Respectable Anonymity: Film Festivals Part I

By Adam Lippe

Do filmmakers make movies for the accolades? The money? The challenge? The answer is entirely subjective, but those that do it for the accolades, how do they feel about the intimacy and vacuum of a film festival screening? The crowd has paid more than they would for a regular ticket, often to see a movie […]

When Will I Be Loved

By Adam Lippe

When Will I Be Loved, another James Toback venture into his dated version of the unseemly, has mostly gained notoriety for Neve Campbell’s nude scenes, which bookend the film, and have literally nothing to do with it. Toback’s legendary misogyny is often hidden behind the idea that strong women know how to assert their sexuality, […]

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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.