- Studio: Koch Lorber Films
- Release Date: Mar 25, 2005
- Critic Score
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75An entertaining look at a genuinely offbeat subject.
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75Dynamite perfectly describes this riveting documentary.
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75The film dwells more on the sensationalistic aspects than the sport itself but it's impossible to deny the tawdry entertainment value in this compelling film tabloid.
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70Highly entertaining and frequently fascinating.
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70Generous, slyly tough-minded documentary.
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70Leitman gets some wonderful tall tales from her subjects, who open up like they've been waiting for years for someone to come along and ask, and she complements it with punishing footage of their exploits.
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70What makes Lipstick & Dynamite its own animal is that, intentionally or not, the director has allowed something else into the mix, a glimpse of the unvarnished and the unsanitized.
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70What a gutsy, sad, seize-the-day, glorious life it was for the women warriors of Lipstick & Dynamite.
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70Smart assembly of terrific archive footage is matched by spirited interviews with the tough old broads today.
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70The women, many in their 70s and 80s, are still tough and proud--and nursing grudges that go back decades, something Leitman plays up by crosscutting between rivals' accounts.
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63The documentary visits elderly women who, then and now, can best be described as tough broads, and listens as they describe the early days of women's wrestling. What they say is not as revealing as how they say it.
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The best gal wrestlers had their signature moves: Ida May Martinez, with her flying drop kick; Ella Waldek, with the "short-arm scissor lift." Filmmaker Leitman, for all her good work, is in need of a close-out manoeuvre of her own.
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60This visually stylish work, with its vintage glamour photos, film and television clips, and snippets from a 1951 B-movie, "Racket Girls," is more of a scrapbook than a coherent history of the sport during its rough-and-tumble infancy.
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50Offers plenty of fun, nostalgic footage of 1950s pro lady wrestlers kicking butt.
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50At its best, the movie is a collection of entertaining memories from a group of gutsy women.
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50Leitman has unearthed a terrific collection of vintage footage - yet, as if doubtful about holding our interest, she skims too quickly over the historical background.
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50Leitman's interviews are lax and inconclusive.
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JimG.6