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 Enforcer (1976, James Fargo)
The Stop Button Posted by on May 2, 2020
The Enforcer is cheap in all the wrong ways, both in terms of budget and narrative, which probably ought to be clear in the first scene, when the movie opens on a butt shot of Jocelyn Jones in Daisy Dukes. She’s hitchhiking but it’s all a setup for the villain reveal—Jones is in an ostensible read more
Dead to Me (2019) s01e01
The Stop Button Posted by on May 1, 2020
The currently strangest thing, one episode into “Dead To Me”—not counting director Amy York Rubin’s pointlessly pensive shot composition, which just distracts in a thirty minute “sitcom”—is how the show handles the humor. Outside the cold open, which has lead Christina Applegate short read more
Clueless (1995, Amy Heckerling)
The Stop Button Posted by on May 1, 2020
I really didn’t want to bag on Clueless when I watched it this time, the first time since the theater, almost twenty-four years ago. It got good reviews on release, which I fully disagreed with—I’d forgotten how much audiences in the eighties and nineties liked farcical sitcom-level characterizatio read more
What We Do in the Shadows (2019) s02e04 – The Curse
The Stop Button Posted by on May 1, 2020
So, remember last time when I was worried about Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) and his subplot with the vampire hunters and then said I shouldn’t be worried about it because I should just trust in “Shadows”? I was right, I shouldn’t be worried about it. This episode’s Guillén subplot has him read more
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s02e02 – Death Comes Knocking
The Stop Button Posted by on May 1, 2020
If this episode of “Miss Fisher’s” doesn’t have the highest body, it definitely feels like it has the highest. People get killed off throughout the runtime—and before it, actually, in flashback. The episode opens with a séance, which is automatically awesome just thinking about Essie Davis read more
Frasier (1993) s01e19 – Give Him the Chair!
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 30, 2020
I missed the writing credits at the beginning of the episode, so every time there was a particularly mean joke—usually at Maris’s expense—I got curious who wrote it. Anne Flett-Giordano and Chuck Ranberg, who’ve been the season’s sturdiest writers; outside the cheap mean jokes, they’re also read more
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s02e01 – Murder Most Scandalous
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 30, 2020
Season Two starts off with a bunch of flashy character reveals, with finally meeting Nathan Page’s ex-wife (Dee Smart) not even being the main one. Very prim, very proper, very Catholic Ashleigh Cummings’s sister, Anna Bamford, is a sex worker and works in a brothel where one of the girls has just read more
Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s05e10 – The Great British Fake Off
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 29, 2020
Okay, “Legends” is going to fifteen episodes this season; this one is episode ten and it feels like they’re getting really close to resolving the season’s main plot and I’m really hoping they don’t meander this season like they did last. They got lost meandering. This episode is split between read more
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s01e13 – King Memses’ Curse
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 29, 2020
I’m a fan of this season finale—and season resolver—and would be even if it didn’t (unintentionally?) follow a bunch of the same narrative beats as Halloween H20. No spoilers. But… it’s H20. After the pre-title murder—a gruesome but not gory one—the action picks up the next morning after read more
City Streets (1931, Rouben Mamoulian)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 29, 2020
The first third of City Streets is this awesome bit of experimenting from director Mamoulian as he tries to figure out how to make a sound picture. Lots of great shots and camera setups, usually with too dawdling cuts. William Shea holds everything just a few seconds too long. But the montage image read more
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s01e12 – Murder in the Dark
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 28, 2020
It’s truly amazing what they’re able to get away with this episode in terms of red herrings, shoehorned subplots, shock tactics, exploitative tension, and so on. Director Daina Reid and writer Ysabelle Dean put everyone through the ringer—with a couple really obvious questions left open at the read more
Frasier (1993) s01e18 – And the Whimper Is…
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 28, 2020
“Frasier,” the show, has made a few references to the popularity of “The Frasier Crane Show,” the in-show radio program Kelsey Grammer hosts. At one point it seemed to be on the ropes, with Grammer and producer Peri Gilpin worrying they’d get cancelled, then it was getting better ratings than read more
Overnight (2003, Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 27, 2020
Overnight is occasionally amusing, often mortifying, never contextualized enough to be interesting, and always compelling. But it’s compelling only if you’re somewhat familiar with the subject of the film, Troy Duffy. Specifically, Duffy’s directorial debut, The Boondock Saints. In 1997, Harvey read more
Frasier (1993) s01e17 – A Midwinter Night’s Dream
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 27, 2020
Mid-Winter Night's Dream has another wonderful script from Chuck Ranberg and Anne Flett-Giordano, showcasing Jane Leeves and David Hyde Pierce’s range while relying on Kesley Grammer and John Mahoney’s… well, reliability. Ranberg and Flett-Giordano play with audience expectation and their read more
The Boondock Saints (1999, Troy Duffy)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 26, 2020
What’s so incredible about Boondock Saints is how David Della Rocco’s atrocious performance distracts from lots of other terrible things going on in the film. At least when Della Rocco is onscreen. When he’s off… well, then the omnipresent deficiencies proudly scream their presences. Della Rocco read more
Frasier (1993) s01e16 – The Show Where Lilith Comes Back
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 25, 2020
Bebe Neuwirth’s visit to the new show, coming in the back nine of the first season, is everything it could and should be. Writers Ken Levine and Davis Isaacs craft this perfect plot, which showcases Neuwirth and gives her a relationship—active or not—with all the regulars, then still manages to read more
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s01e11 – Blood & Circuses
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 25, 2020
It’s a very intense episode, with Phyrne (Essie Davis) in constant danger—whether she knows it or not, usually yes but not the extent of it—in addition to being in a very traumatic headspace. We finally find out what happens to her little sister (or at least as much as Davis knows) when Davis read more
Fist of Fear, Touch of Death (1980, Matthew Mallinson)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 25, 2020
Either there’s a good story behind Fist of Fear, Touch of Death’s production or it’s exactly what it seems to be, some producers got ahold of the rights to an old Chinese movie, 1957’s The Thunderstorm, starring a teenage Bruce Lee in a non-martial arts role (in fact, it’s incest melodrama), read more
All That Jazz (1979, Bob Fosse)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 24, 2020
There are few secrets in All That Jazz; the film immediately forecasts where it’s going, with clear shots of star Roy Scheider in the hospital amid the other quickly cut montage sequences. But these are flash forwards, as opposed to the present action and then we’re seeing flashback. Because we’re read more
What We Do in the Shadows (2019) s02e03 – Brain Scramblies
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 24, 2020
This episode leaves me with grave concerns—no pun—over Harvey Guillén’s continuing vampire hunter storyline. Vampire familiar Guillén has not only learned he’s a Van Helsing, he’s also proven himself a master vampire hunter already—killing off the Nosferatu sent after his familiar and read more