Perry Mason: The Case of the Notorious Nun (1986, Ron Satlof)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Oct 8, 2016
So Perry Mason: The Case of the Notorious Nun. It’s not good. It is not a good TV movie. Even if the writing were better, Satlof is a lousy director. And Héctor R. Figueroa’s photography is quite bad. The lighting in the courtroom finale changes between shots. The editing is already graceless–more read more
The Seventh Seal (1957, Ingmar Bergman)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Oct 7, 2016
The Seventh Seal has a lot of striking imagery. Gunnar Fischer’s cinematography is peerless, but it’s more–it’s how the photography works with the shot composition, how the shots work with one another (Lennart Wallén’s editing is simultaneously amiable and stunning). And then there’s how read more
The Wailing (2016, Na Hong-jin)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Oct 2, 2016
What a stupid movie. Sure, The Wailing isn’t all bad. The cinematography from Hong Kyung-pyo is fine. It’s not great because, even its better moments, director Na never does a particularly good job. He likes long shots, he likes three shots, but he doesn’t like actually trying to read more
Perry Mason Returns (1985, Ron Satlof)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Oct 1, 2016
The most impressive technical contribution to Perry Mason Returns has to be Dick DeBenedictis’s music. He lifts thriller style music, some horror, some whatever, then applies it to this somewhat bland TV movie. Albert J. Dunk’s photography is too muted and director Satlof, though very c read more
Pride of the Marines (1945, Delmer Daves)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 30, 2016
Pride of the Marines is a disappointment. It never gets particularly good, but it does have a lot of potential–at least from its cast–so when it starts getting better and then slips, it’s a disappointment. The film starts before Pearl Harbor with John Garfield’s would-be bac read more
The Monolith Monsters (1957, John Sherwood)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 25, 2016
Against the odds, The Monolith Monsters almost comes together in the finale. The special effects are good, there’s a lot of tension, none of the acting is too bad. And then the end flops. I want to blame director Sherwood, maybe screenwriters Norman Jolley and Robert M. Fresco, maybe editor P read more
Ladyhawke (1985, Richard Donner)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 25, 2016
Two things about Ladyhawke without getting to the script or some of the acting. First, Andrew Powell’s music. It’s godawful; it’s stunning to see a director as competent as Richard Donner put something so godawful in a film. Intentionally put it in a film. It’s silly. It sou read more
Alligator (1980, Lewis Teague)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 23, 2016
Alligator has quite a few things going for it. Lead Robert Forster is great, Robin Riker’s solid as his love interest and sidekick, John Sayles’s script has some excellent moments in it (some of them just being the attention he pays to Forster and Riker’s relationship), the giant read more
Patterns (1956, Fielder Cook)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 18, 2016
Patterns is a short and simple picture. Van Heflin is the new man at a corporation; he suspects he’s there to replace his assigned mentor, Ed Begley. He has a ruthless boss (Everett Sloane) and a similarly ruthless wife (Beatrice Straight). Will Heflin, called a rising young man (Heflin was f read more
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013, Joel and Ethan Coen)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 16, 2016
Just over half way into Inside Llewyn Davis, there’s a moment where lead Oscar Isaac looks into the face of responsibility–weighs it, weighs the consequences of not accepting it, makes his decision. Until that moment, the Coen Brothers hadn’t candidly identified the film as a char read more
Give Us the Moon (1944, Val Guest)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 13, 2016
Even though Give Us the Moon ends up going exactly where I expected it to go, the film’s not predictable at all. It opens with Peter Graves’s post-war layabout. He was a war hero, his father (Frank Cellier) is a rich hotelier, he wants to do nothing with his life except enjoy it. Throug read more
Night People (2015, Gerard Lough)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 13, 2016
Endings should never be too literal; especially not in a film where a character talks about having ambiguous endings to stories. Night People ends too literally, especially after a third act where all sorts of threads dangle near one another. Writer and director Lough doesn’t tie things up ex read more
Darkness Falls (2016, Jarno Lee Vinsencius)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 10, 2016
Darkness Falls runs fifteen minutes. The entire short film is set up for its end twist, which multi-hyphenate (including writer and director) Vinsencius hides fairly well. The short never meanders towards its conclusion, instead it just stops and muscles through a bunch of expository dialogue and t read more
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971, Mel Stuart)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 5, 2016
Part of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory’s greatest successes is the plotting–how top-billed Gene Wilder doesn’t show up until almost halfway into the film–but it’s also one of the film’s problems. It needs another five or ten minutes with Wilder; probably read more
Blazing Saddles (1974, Mel Brooks)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 5, 2016
Maybe the first two-thirds of Blazing Saddles are really funny, getting great performances out of lead Cleavon Little, his sidekick Gene Wilder and especially Harvey Korman’s villain. Wilder’s almost an add-on character; he’s around so Little, in addition to being funny and likabl read more
Secrets & Lies (1996, Mike Leigh)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 5, 2016
From the opening credits, Andrew Dickson’s score sets the tone for Secrets & Lies. It’s going to be severe. I don’t think there’s a light moment in the score–any of the film’s lighter moments, usually involving Timothy Spall’s ability to make people smi read more
Rashomon (1950, Kurosawa Akira)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 4, 2016
Where to start with Rashomon? Starting at the beginning means talking about the bookends–three strangers stranded in the rain, two telling the third different versions of the same story, each ostensibly true. The rain pours down around them, drowning out their voices. Rashomon is a film witho read more
The Postman (1997, Kevin Costner)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 2, 2016
Where The Postman succeeds, besides with the performances, most of its technical aspects, is with director Costner’s ability to find each character’s emotional reality in a scene. He achieves a sort of alchemist’s miracle, but not with lead into gold, but with saccharine into subl read more
Captain America: Civil War (2016, Anthony Russo and Joe Russo)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 2, 2016
I wasn’t aware it was possible, but go-to Marvel superhero movie composer Henry Jackman is actually getting worse as he does more of these movies. His score for Captain America: Civil War is laughable, which is too bad, because if the film hit the thematic beats Jackman failed to achieve? Wel read more
Baby Boom (1987, Charles Shyer)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 1, 2016
The first half of Baby Boom is this incredibly efficient story about career woman Diane Keaton deciding she wants to be a mom to a baby she inherits. Is inherit the right word? Probably not, but Keaton’s character can’t figure out how to change a diaper (though she can later milk a cow read more