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.
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
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977, John Boorman)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 30, 2016
Oh, no, Ennio Morricone did the music for Exorcist II: The Heretic. I feel kind of bad now because the music is not good and I like Ennio Morricone. I’m sure I’ve liked something cinematographer William A. Fraker photographed too, but his photography in Heretic is atrocious. Because it& read more
The Oscar (1966, Russell Rouse)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 27, 2016
The Oscar is a spectacular kind of awful. It’s the perfect storm of content, casting and technical ineptitude. Director Rouse probably doesn’t have a single good shot in the entire film. It might not even be possible with Joseph Ruttenberg’s photography and the maybe studio televi read more
Sleepaway Camp (1983, Robert Hiltzik)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 25, 2016
Sleepaway Camp has two things going for it on a consistent basis–Benjamin Davis’s cinematography (it’s not flashy, but it’s exceptionally competent) and the special effects. There aren’t a lot of gore shots in Camp, but director Hiltzik makes sure they count. He can read more
The Mangler (1995, Tobe Hooper), the director’s cut
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 24, 2016
The Mangler is terrible. One hopes the rumor producer Anant Singh replaced director Hooper is true because the film’s bad enough and desperate enough, you occasionally want to cut it some slack. You can’t, because it’s terrible, but you still kind of wish you could. Here’s t read more
The Dunwich Horror (1970, Daniel Haller)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 24, 2016
There’s a handful of good things about The Dunwich Horror. They can’t overcome the bad things, but they’re still pretty neat. The script, at least for a while, is fairly nimble. There’s a lot of bad exposition from old dudes Ed Begley and Lloyd Bochner, but the younger folks read more
The Day of the Locust (1975, John Schlesinger)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 22, 2016
The Day of the Locust is a gentle film, at least in terms of Schlesinger’s direction, Conrad L. Hall’s cinematography and John Barry’s score. The film’s softly lit but with a whole lot of focus. Schlesinger wants to make sure the audience gets to see every part of the actors read more
Lethal Weapon 3 (1992, Richard Donner)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 21, 2016
Lethal Weapon 3 is an expert action movie. Director Donner, cinematographer Jan de Bont, editors Robert Brown and Battle Davis do phenomenal work. Even though the cop action thriller plot of the film is its least compelling–dirty ex-cop Stuart Wilson is funding real estate development through read more
Midnight (1939, Mitchell Leisen)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 16, 2016
Midnight is a rather smart film. Screenwriters Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder are able to do a whole bunch of plot twists–always through comedic means–because of how they’ve got the film structured. The film opens with Claudette Colbert arriving in Paris, penniless. Taxi driver read more
A Perfect World (1993, Clint Eastwood)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 10, 2016
A Perfect World runs almost two hours and twenty minutes (it does with end credits). The last act of the film is a seventeen or so minute showdown in real time. Until that point in the film, John Lee Hancock’s script flirts with occasional sequences in real time, but there’s a lot of su read more