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.
A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985, Jack Sholder)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 19, 2015
Why is Freddy’s Revenge so bad? It shouldn’t be so bad. No mistake–it’s terrible and it’s terrible mostly because of director Sholder and lead Mark Patton. While Patton’s awful, it’d be wrong to blame it entirely on him. He doesn’t get any help whatso read more
Key Largo (1948, John Huston)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 14, 2015
Key Largo is a grand affair. Humphrey Bogart versus Edward G. Robinson with Lauren Bacall and Claire Trevor in the wings. Not to mention Lionel Barrymore. The film plays beautifully. Director Huston and co-screenwriter Richard Brooks give Bogart and Bacall some lovely, ever so gentle; Bogart’ read more
Re-Animator (1985, Stuart Gordon)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 11, 2015
Re-Animator. A romantic comedy about wacky med students who contend with vindictive deans, lecherous professors and student loans. With some good, old-fashioned decapitation thrown in. No. That description is way too reductive. Even though it’s technically correct. Director Gordon recognizes read more
The Elephant Man (1980, David Lynch)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 30, 2015
I am not being hyperbolic when I describe David Lynch’s narrative handling of The Elephant Man to be peerless. If I described it a splendid, there would be other films and narrative handling to compare with it. But this film is so singular–John Hurt as an exceptionally disfigured man in read more
Anastasia (1956, Anatole Litvak)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 29, 2015
Anastasia manages that fine line between being dramatic and a constant delight. Ingrid Bergman’s performance is magnificent, with Arthur Laurents’s screenplay–and Litvak’s direction of her–never quite letting the viewer in. It’s a mystery after all–is Bergm read more
Rio Grande (1950, John Ford)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 17, 2015
Rio Grande doesn’t have much going for it. The best performance is probably Ben Johnson, who isn’t even very good, he’s just not as bad as everyone else. Harry Carey Jr. and Victor McLaglen aren’t good, but they’re likable. Carey’s performance is just weak, while read more
Bonnie and Clyde (1967, Arthur Penn)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 14, 2015
Bonnie and Clyde opens with two immediate introductions. First, in the opening titles, photographs from the 1930s set the scene. Second, in the first scene, with Faye Dunaway (as Bonnie) and Warren Beatty (as Clyde) meet one another and flirt their way into armed robbery. Okay, maybe in the latter, read more
The Indian Spirit Guide (1968, Roy Ward Baker)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 12, 2015
The Indian Spirit Guide is an odd amalgam of two plot lines; at least by the end of the episode. Until the end, Robert Bloch’s teleplay juxtaposes them perfectly with just the right amount of interweaving. Julie Harris plays a wealthy widow romanced by her “paranormal investigator,̶ read more
Serpico (1973, Sidney Lumey)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 10, 2015
There’s a strange disconnect between director Lumet and actor Al Pacino on Serpico. The film, at least in how Pacino plays it, is a character study. Yes, it’s a character study of someone in a great deal of transition–Pacino’s cop, over twelve rather poorly paced years, goes read more
Weekend (1967, Jean-Luc Godard)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 7, 2015
The best part of Weekend is Jean-Pierre Léaud singing his dialogue while in a phone booth. He then gets into a fight with leads Jean Yanne and Mireille Darc as they try to get a ride from him. Weekend is about the unreality of bourgeois life when it gets into the wild–in this case, the French read more
The Haunted House (1921, Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 5, 2015
The Haunted House has some excellent gags. There’s a lot of set gags in the finale, when bank clerk Keaton ends up in the–well, the haunted house. His coworker–a delightfully evil Joe Roberts–is actually a counterfeiter who uses the haunted house to print money; the haunted read more
An Autumn Afternoon (1962, Ozu Yasujirô)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 3, 2015
In An Autumn Afternoon, director Ozu has a peculiar approach to how he presents his cast delivering dialogue. They stare just off camera and speak calmly, gently, no matter what. Ozu and photographer Atsuta Yûharu are incredibly precise with the composition; while Hamamura Yoshiyasu’s editing read more
Shame (1968, Ingmar Bergman)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jul 27, 2015
Shame has three or four sections. Director Bergman doesn’t draw a lot of attention to the transition between the first parts, he hides it in the narrative. Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow are a married couple living on an island following a war. Not much information about the war, but they̵ read more
[Stop Button Lists] Film School in a Car, Lesson 03
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jul 23, 2015
I had good reasoning when I decided to listen to The Funhouse commentary; it’s similar to Psycho III in it being a Shout! Factory special edition, though I saw Funhouse more recently than Psycho III. It’s a horror film, but I really liked Funhouse. It’s one of my “dissenter& read more
Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964, Byron Haskin)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jul 20, 2015
Robinson Crusoe on Mars is silly. It’s inconsistent and silly. The film survives a weak first act–the narrative trick of opening with one character (played, poorly, by Adam West) and then transferring to another (Paul Mantee) is fine, only Mantee doesn’t get any good material for read more
Mon Oncle (1958, Jacques Tati)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jul 17, 2015
Mon Oncle has a concerning amount of narrative. Way too much of the film is about Jean-Pierre Zola and Adrienne Servantie’s bourgeois ultra-modern couple fretting over their son’s affection for his uncle, played by writer-director Tati. Tati’s protagonist does not live in the auto read more
[Stop Button Lists] Eleanor Parker at MGM, 1952-60
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jul 16, 2015
I grew up avoiding Eleanor Parker movies. At least the one everyone knew about–my mom and my sister used to watch The Sound of Music all the time. My dad and I avoided it for years. When I did discover Eleanor Parker in the late nineties, I can’t remember the order in which I saw her fi read more
Neighbors (1920, Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jul 15, 2015
I’m not sure what the best thing is about Neighbors. There’s the comic pacing, there’s the comic acrobatics, there’s the story, there’s the acting. Co-directors Keaton and Cline quickly introduce this fantastic setup–Romeo and Juliet across a fence in an alley an read more
Out of the Past (1947, Jacques Tourneur)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jul 14, 2015
Out of the Past always has at least two things going on at once. Not just the double crossings, which is so prevalent lead Robert Mitchum even taunts the bad guys with it, but how the film itself works. Daniel Mainwaring’s script–which gives Mitchum this lengthy narration over a flashba read more
Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986, Tom McLoughlin)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jul 13, 2015
Director McLoughlin tries something new for the Friday the 13th franchise; he makes Jason Lives a monster movie. A really bland, not even slightly creepy and only once surprising, monster movie. It’s not notable for it failing to be a good monster movie, it’s notable because McLoughlin& read more