Welcome to BlogHub: the Best in Veteran and Emerging Classic Movie Blogs
You can rate and share your favorite classic movie posts here.
You can rate and share your favorite classic movie posts here.
The Winslow Boy (1999, David Mamet)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 22, 2017
The Winslow Boy utilizes all the trappings of a stage adaptation without ever being stagy. Director Mamet opens the film with a family entering their home–there’s some muted conversation before they get completely inside, then the introductions begin. So it’s a very play structure too, at least read more
The Prison (2017, Na Hyeon)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 17, 2017
The Prison takes place in 1995. Is it because smartphones would ruin the execution of the premise? Or maybe something has changed in the South Korean prison system to no longer make the premise plausable? I don’t know. It’s a pointless and somewhat distracting detail. The premise pretends to be read more
Flash Gordon (1938, Frederick Stephani)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 16, 2017
Flash Gordon is all about its gee whiz factor. The serial goes all out to create the planet Mongo, which has come out of nowhere (in space) and is on a collision course with Earth. Only scientist Frank Shannon has a plan to save the otherwise panicked and resigned Earth–take a rocketship to the new read more
Waxwork (1988, Anthony Hickox), the unrated version
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 16, 2017
Waxwork has a distressing lack of charm. It ought to have some charm. The first act has its cast of young college students–whose college set seems to be a high school–speaking in some affected pseudo-fifties teen melodrama dialect. It ought to be sostaggeringmewhat charming. It’s not, but it ought read more
But I’m a Cheerleader (1999, Jamie Babbit)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 15, 2017
But I’m a Cheerleader is too short. It runs eighty-five minutes, which would be fine if the narrative fit into director Babbit’s affected, aspirationally camp style. But Brian Peterson’s script is front heavy. And Jules Labarthe’s cinematography is too flat. Rachel Kamerman’s production design read more
The Voice of the Turtle (1947, Irving Rapper)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 15, 2017
The Voice of the Turtle runs an hour and forty minutes. There’s a split about forty minutes in and, in the second hour, leads Eleanor Parker and Ronald Reagan are playing slightly different characters. Screenwriter John Van Druten adapted his play (with additional dialogue from Charles Hoffman) and read more
Flash Gordon (1936, Frederick Stephani), Chapter 13: Rocketing to Earth
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 14, 2017
Rocketing to Earth starts out poorly. The cliffhanger resolution is so lazy star Buster Crabbe remarks on it; clearly someone making Flash Gordon knew they’d run out of resolves. Worse, Crabbe and the gang go right back to Charles Middleton’s palace. The past four or five chapters have just been read more
Flash Gordon (1936, Frederick Stephani), Chapter 12: Trapped in the Turret
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 13, 2017
Trapped in the Turret is the penultimate chapter of Flash Gordon, which might explain some of its inconsistencies. After a stunt person heavy resolution to the previous cliffhanger, Richard Alexander tells scheming Priscilla Lawson she might just try being nice to Buster Crabbe and Jean Rogers. So read more
Flash Gordon (1936, Frederick Stephani), Chapter 11: In the Claws of the Tigron
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 12, 2017
Once again, the title refers to a finale item. In the Claws of the Tigron doesn’t have much tigron (a Mongonian tiger), but it does have a lot of invisible Buster Crabbe causing mischief around Charles Middleton’s palace. The chapter’s a tad nonsensical–Crabbe, invisible, te read more
Flash Gordon (1936, Frederick Stephani), Chapter 10: The Unseen Peril
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 11, 2017
Once again, the chapter title doesn’t come into play until the very end–The Unseen Peril, or at least what seems like it, shows up in the last scene. The chapter skips a more dramatic cliffhanger, going on just a few seconds longer to do a puzzling one. Most of the chapter involves Priscilla Lawson read more
Flash Gordon (1936, Frederick Stephani), Chapter 9: Fighting the Fire Dragon
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 10, 2017
This chapter’s title, Fighting the Fire Dragon, makes a big promise. There’s going to be a fire dragon and there’s doing to be a fight against said fire dragon. Only the former proves true. Any fight is, presumably, coming in a subsequent chapter. Thanks, as usual, to Priscilla Lawson’s scheming, read more
Flash Gordon (1936, Frederick Stephani), Chapter 8: Tournament of Death
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 9, 2017
Tournament of Death is an unexpectedly strong chapter. There’s a lot going on. There’s the cliffhanger resolution, there’s Buster Crabbe facing off with Charles Middleton for the first time since Chapter One, there’s Frank Shannon saving the day, there’s Jack Lipson having character development, read more
Flash Gordon (1936, Frederick Stephani), Chapter 7: Shattering Doom
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 8, 2017
It’s another heavy chapter. Despite a valiant escape effort, Buster Crabbe ends up back in chains. He and his fellow, shirtless men in shorts shovel radium into king hawkman Jack Lipson’s furnance. Lipson’s still testing Jean Rogers’s affections. She’s got a couple rat read more
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995, Carl Franklin)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 8, 2017
Devil in a Blue Dress is almost so much better. Director Franklin gets easily distracted and follows tangents, both in the script and the directing. The latter makes sense–he’s always too enthuastic about the (excellent) production design, recreating late 1940s Black Los Angeles. With Tak Fujimoto’ read more
How to Steal the World (1968, Sutton Roley)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 8, 2017
It takes a long seventy-five minutes to get there, but How to Steal the World does have some good moments in its finale. World is a theatrical release of a “Man from U.N.C.L.E.” television two-parter. It leads to an often boring ninety minutes, which improves in the second half just for momentum’s read more
Flash Gordon (1936, Frederick Stephani), Chapter 6: Flaming Torture
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 7, 2017
Flaming Torture is about flaming torture. Buster Crabbe and his allies get captured when they’re trying to rescue Jean Rogers. While Rogers has an arc with Priscilla Lawson–Rogers has to seduce moron king of the hawkmen Jack Lipson (in an atrociously annoying performance)–all Crabbe gets to do read more
Flash Gordon (1936, Frederick Stephani), Chapter 5: The Destroying Ray
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 6, 2017
Despite a lackluster resolution to the cliffhanger–there’s a questionably timed emergency response–and some dawdling, The Destroying Ray eventually comes through. Director Stephani, along with the editors, works up a pace throughout and stops at just the right moment for maximum effect. Most of read more
Flash Gordon (1936, Frederick Stephani), Chapter 4: Battling the Sea Beast
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 5, 2017
Battling the Sea Beast opens with Buster Crabbe fighting an octopus. Mostly it’s Crabbe–quite enthusiastically–feigning a struggle against one or two legs of the octopus, which shows no life once they’re battling. Before it was stock footage; with the fight, it’s a passive prop Crabbe has read more
The Hidden (1987, Jack Sholder)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 4, 2017
The Hidden opens with a shock. Then there’s another shock, then another, then another. The first act of the film races through them. Chris Mulkey is on a killing spree, the cops are in pursuit–including Michael Nouri’s soulful supercop–only it turns out Mulkey can’t be killed. Enter oddball read more
Flash Gordon (1936, Frederick Stephani), Chapter 3: Captured by Shark Men
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 4, 2017
There’s some good action in Captured by Shark Men, with Buster Crabbe rescuing Jean Rogers from Charles Middleton and then an undersea sequence with a giant octopus. The cliffhanger resolution is relatively decent, with Crabbe up against a giant lizard monster. Most of the chapter is either action read more