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.
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s01e10 – Death by Miss Adventure
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 24, 2020
It’s hard to know where this episode goes “wrong.” It’s not a bad episode, but it’s not a great one either. It’s nowhere near as good as the last, whatever, five. And it’s co-written by Liz Doran, who adapted one of those previous excellent ones. So maybe it’s the source novel not just read more
High Tide (1987, Gillian Armstrong)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 23, 2020
During High Tide’s final twist, I began to wonder just how different the film would be with different music. Sometimes Peter Best’s score is fine—or even good—sometimes it’s very much a product of its time and using way too much saxophone. The film’s biggest melodrama beat, where it commits read more
Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s05e09 – Zari, Not Zari
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 23, 2020
It’s an unexpectedly strong episode. Not everything goes off without a hitch—teaming up Jes Macallan and Dominic Purcell as they go through time trying to make it seem like Purcell was a present dad ought to be a great comedy subplot but instead just seems rushed. And, despite some really good acti read more
Frasier (1993) s01e15 – You Can’t Tell a Crook by His Cover
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 23, 2020
Would it be a spoiler to comment on the presence of always a cop character actor Ron Dean being in a “line-up” of three people where two are cops and one’s an ex-con? It’s fun to see Dean in a slightly different context, especially since he gets a punchline (he knows about a fancy serving plate read more
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s01e09 – Queen of the Flowers
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 22, 2020
It’s a very intense episode. Miss Fisher (Essie Davis) is mentoring a group of underprivileged girls for a pageant and they’re the mystery, so they’re the ones in danger. It’s the first time “Miss Fisher’s” has really done the child or youth in grave danger thing and it’s a lot. Both read more
Frasier (1993) s01e14 – Can’t Buy Me Love
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 22, 2020
It’s a packed, but never frantic episode–Chuck Ranberg and Anne Flett-Giordano are the “Frasier” all-star writers right now and they’ve got a lot of inventive work here, both the plotting and character arcs. Every development is combination delight and surprise. The episode starts with read more
Justice League: The New Frontier Special (2008) #1
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 22, 2020
It would be wrong to describe Justice League: The New Frontier Special as hack work. Darywn Cooke’s art on the feature, even his plotting of it, is not hacky. Neither is the Robin and Kid Flash story’s art, courtesy Dave Bullock and Michael Cho. Even the Wonder Woman and Black Canary go to a Playbo read more
Frasier (1993) s01e13 – Guess Who’s Coming to Breakfast
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 21, 2020
It’s incredible how well Kelsey Grammer is able to play Frasier making social faux pas. It should run counter to his character, but never does. When Grammer’s digging himself his deeper and deeper hole this episode—as Peri Gilpin looks on, astonished—it just makes sense. Of course he’s going read more
DC: The New Frontier (2004)d
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 21, 2020
Darwin Cooke’s most impressive achievement with The New Frontier isn’t the art, which is a mix of sublime, grandiose, muted, and bombastic, or keeping track of all the characters (there have to be hundreds), but the voice he finds for characters. He starts big, with Losers member Johnny Cloud narra read more
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s01e08 – Away with the Fairies
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 21, 2020
Once again I stand corrected as to what “Miss Fisher’s” needs to do to have a successful episode. This one has a case very tied to Essie Davis’s past—victim Heather Bolton was one of Davis’s teachers, prime suspect Deborah Kennedy is a mentor—has lots of guest stars (Phryne Fellow Philippe read more
Emma (2020, Autumn de Wilde)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 20, 2020
If IMDb is correct, there have been only ten other adaptations of Jane Austen’s Emma, and I’m including the modernizations. So it’s not so much Emma is oft-adapted, maybe just it’s got a very memorable story. Memorable enough even I was anticipating how—oh, wow, it’s director de Wilde’s read more
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s01e07 – Murder in Montparnasse
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 20, 2020
So this episode takes everything I said—based on the last two—was needed to make a great “Miss Fisher’s.” Turns out I’m completely wrong, because Murder in Montparnasse doesn’t just break (most) of my rules, it breaks my bigger, obvious rules for melodramatic plotting. It ties together read more
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s01e06 – Ruddy Gore
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 19, 2020
It’s an excellent episode and maybe the one most interested in the murder investigation. There aren’t any substantial subplots—Ashleigh Cummings has to deal with Hugo Johnstone-Burt being a lug of a boyfriend and not a romantic daydream like stage actor Alex Rathgeber, who’s actually a right read more
The Appaloosa (1966, Sidney J. Furie)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 19, 2020
The Appaloosa could be worse. Director Furie apes styles he doesn’t understand how to use—his Leone-esque angles, the Acid Western—with what’s a fairly traditional Western, albeit just with a Mexican supporting cast. Well, okay, so Marlon Brando is the only gringo playing a gringo. All the other read more
Frasier (1993) s01e12 – Miracle on Third or Fourth Street
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 19, 2020
It’s a Christmas episode and a good one. Just the right amount of humor and heartwarming, with Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) ending up alone on Christmas and in need of some good fellowship as it turns out. Everything seems to be going swimmingly for Grammer’s first Christmas with Mahoney in Seattle, read more
Champagne for Caesar (1950, Richard Whorf)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 18, 2020
What’s so frustrating about Champagne for Caesar is how little the film really would’ve need to do to be a success. It just needed a rewrite. Someone to come in and fix Hans Jacoby and Frederick Brady’s script, which is usually fine but they really can’t figure out what to do with Celeste Holm. read more
What We Do in the Shadows (2019) s02e02 – Ghosts
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 18, 2020
Ghosts is a very well-balanced “What We Do in the Shadows,” meaning all three vampires—Kayvan Novak, Matt Berry, Natasia Demetriou—get their own showcases and there’s some left over for Mark Proksch’s energy vampire. Not a lot for Harvey Guillén, but he got last episode. The episode starts read more
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s01e05 – Raisins and Almonds
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 18, 2020
After the lackluster previous episode, the show’s back on track with this one, which almost showcases what material “Miss Fisher’s” works best with. For instance, there’s not time for the whole supporting cast. Nathan Page doesn’t get a whole bunch to do this episode, but he gets to do all read more
What We Do in the Shadows (2019) s02e01 – Resurrection
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 17, 2020
So, there’s a lot to say about “What We Do in the Shadows”’s return, like how they figured out an amazing way to keep growing Harvey Guillén’s vampire hunter arc (as he is a vampire’s familiar) and how the show uses a time jump (summer is over, so we get some exposition—unclear if the read more
Frasier (1993) s01e11 – Death Becomes Him
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 17, 2020
I’ve got to stop being so surprised when Kelsey Grammer basically gets an episode to himself. It’s his show, it just happens to have a phenomenal supporting cast. I was going to say scene-stealing but they aren’t. No one crowds anyone out in “Frasier,” it’s exceptionally balanced. This episode read more