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 Passenger (1975, Michelangelo Antonioni)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jun 5, 2015
The Passenger is an odd mix of existential crisis and globe-trotting thriller. Director Antonioni does far better with the former than the latter, which has Jenny Runacre trying to discover what happened to husband Jack Nicholson. What happened to Nicholson is he assumes a dead man’s identity read more
Jane Brown’s Body (1968, Alan Gibson)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jun 3, 2015
Jane Brown’s Body uses resurrection science to explore a melodrama. Anthony Skene’s teleplay isn’t bad, it’s just a little obvious in its plotting. But there’s a definite, subconscious patriarchy thing playing out and it makes for an interesting time. Stefanie Powers h read more
The Circus (1928, Charles Chaplin)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on May 29, 2015
The Circus has a melancholic tone it doesn’t need and one director Chaplin is never fully invested in. The first half of the film is a series of fantastic gags–well, except the stuff with ring master Al Ernest Garcia being abusive to his daughter, played by Merna Kennedy. But the rest o read more
The ‘High Sign’ (1921, Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on May 27, 2015
The ‘High Sign’ starts innocuously enough. Leading man Buster Keaton is out of work and answers a want ad to be a clerk at a shooting range. Maybe the tone of the short can be determined from Keaton stealing a cop’s gun to practice, because things don’t stay innocuous for lo read more
Drunken Angel (1948, Kurosawa Akira)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on May 25, 2015
Drunken Angel never hides its sentimentality. The film’s protagonist, an alcoholic doctor working in a slum (Shimura Takashi in a glorious performance), is well aware of his sentimentality. He resents it–Shimura has these great yelling and throwing scenes–but it’s what keeps read more
The Palm Beach Story (1942, Preston Sturges)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on May 22, 2015
The Palm Beach Story is a narrative. Director Sturges opens with a rapidly cut prologue showing stars Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea getting married, where he inserts clues for what will eventually be the film’s utterly pointless deus ex machina. Sure, Palm Beach runs less than ninety minu read more
A Day at the Races (1937, Sam Wood)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on May 18, 2015
Until the halfway point or so, A Day at the Races moves quite well. Sure, it gets off to a slow start–introducing Chico as sidekick to Maureen O’Sullivan and setting up her problems (her sanitarium is going out of business), which isn’t funny stuff. I think Allan Jones even shows read more
Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on May 16, 2015
In Citizen Kane, director Welles ties everything together–not just the story (he does wrap the narrative visually), but also how the filmmaking relates to the film’s content. Kane’s story can’t be told any other way. That precision–whether it’s in the summary seq read more
College (1927, James W. Horne)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on May 15, 2015
The best sequence in College is also the longest. Protagonist Buster Keaton, after failing at baseball (he’s a bookworm who needs to get athletic to impress a girl), goes out for track and field. Keaton observes other men succeed at the various events, tries them himself, fails miserably (and read more
Eve (1968, Robert Stevens)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on May 13, 2015
For all of its problems, Eve rarely feels stagy. Director Stevens makes the most of his location shooting, whether it’s town or country, and there are enough scenes out doors to make up for the utter lack of establishing shots. It’s for television, it’s on a budget. It’s als read more
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984, Joseph Zito)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on May 13, 2015
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter never tries to be scary. It tries to be gory… but not too gory. It saves the biggest gore moment for the last, when any number of the other ones throughout the film would’ve given Tom Savini better material. It’s supposed to be gory, but not too read more
[Stop Button Modells] Le Garcon Dans Le Lac: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on May 13, 2015
An audiovisual essay about Joseph Zito’s 1984 film, “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter,” produced by Frank Mancuso Jr. for Paramount Pictures. read more
The Karate Kid (1984, John G. Avildsen)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on May 9, 2015
James Crabe’s photography gets The Karate Kid through the rough patches. The film’s incredibly uneven–Bill Conti’s score initially seems like it’ll be a plus, ends up being a minus, and the editing is strange. Director Avildsen, with two other editors, can’t seem read more
Paths of Glory (1957, Stanley Kubrick)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on May 8, 2015
Paths of Glory takes place over four days, runs just under ninety minutes and has thirteen or so significant characters. It’s hard to identify the most significant character–Kirk Douglas’s protagonist the viewer’s way into the film, but he’s not the most significant. T read more
The Last Detail (1973, Hal Ashby)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on May 4, 2015
Even though Jack Nicholson gets top billing and the most bombastic role in The Last Detail, Otis Young has the harder job. He’s got to temper Nicholson, both for the sake of the audience and of the narrative. The film introduces the two men simultaneously–Robert Towne’s script alm read more
The Hearts of Age (1934)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on May 3, 2015
The Hearts of Age is a funny short film. It’s weird funny, but it’s also funny funny. The weird has these grotesquely made up people–the film centers on an old woman, sitting on a bell, being pulled from below by this servant (in blackface). People pass her, going down these stair read more
Repulsion (1965, Roman Polanski)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on May 1, 2015
At around the seventy minute mark, Repulsion finally gives Catherine Deneuve some personality. Sure, she’s gone completely insane at this point, but she sings a little lullaby to herself. And Deneuve is in at least sixty-five of those seventy minutes without any personality (she loses it agai read more
The Parallax View (1974, Alan J. Pakula)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Apr 27, 2015
Not quite halfway through The Parallax View, the film loses its footing. Director Pakula keeps the audience a good three car lengths from not just the action of the film–with long shots in Panavision–but also understanding the action of the film. Parallax even goes so far to introduce p read more
Mystery Train (1989, Jim Jarmusch)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Apr 24, 2015
Mystery Train is a comedy. It’s many other things–an examination and comparison of various kinds of differentness–but it’s also a very funny comedy. In fact, Jarmusch keeps characters around for nothing else. Train is the interconnected story of seven people (across three ch read more
House Specialty (1978, Sophie Tatischeff)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Apr 22, 2015
House Specialty chronicles the last few minutes of a day at a pastry shop in a small French town. The short’s credits are incomplete, but it appears the lead–the clerk–is played by Dominique Lavanant. She’s an attractive young woman surrounded either by old men or almost old read more