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.
At the Earth’s Core (1976, Kevin Connor), the digest version
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Mar 22, 2014
Take one bad movie–At the Earth's Core–running eighty-nine minutes and take one inept editor and tell him or her (the editor is uncredited) to cut it down to fourteen minutes. It's a lousy movie anyway, so what are you going to lose…. Well, some bad things. Definitely so read more
Lovesick (1983, Marshall Brickman)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Mar 21, 2014
Lovesick is an unassuming comedy. Director Brickman will occasionally bring in frantic, sitcom-like plotting to jazz things up momentarily, but otherwise the film’s exceedingly calm and measured. It only runs ninety-some minutes; it’s gradual, without much conflict at all–in fact, read more
The Bigamist (1953, Ida Lupino)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Mar 17, 2014
With a sensational title like The Bigamist, one might expect something lurid and exploitative from the film. Definitely from the titular lead, Edmond O’Brien. But, no, poor O’Brien is just a married traveling salesman with a barren, work-oriented wife (Joan Fontaine) so who can blame hi read more
Beware! The Blog (1972, Larry Hagman)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Mar 9, 2014
Could Beware! The Blob be less competent? Possibly not. Screenwriters Jack Woods and Anthony Harris approach Beware! like a spoof. It’s a comedic early seventies handling, complete with hippy jokes, racism, some cracks at small businessmen, pot, Eastern Europeans… Woods and Harris cover read more
Big Trouble in Little China (1986, John Carpenter)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Mar 9, 2014
Although Big Trouble in Little China takes place in modern day San Francisco and has a whole bunch of awesome special effects, it’s really just John Carpenter doing another Western. This time he’s doing a light comedy Western and he’s got the perfect script for it. W.D. Richter (c read more
The Blob (1988, Chuck Russell)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Mar 8, 2014
The Blob is a mixed bag. On one hand, director Russell does a good job throughout and he and Frank Darabont’s script is well-plotted. On the other hand, the script will occasionally have some idiotic dialogue and the actors just stumble and fall through it. Similarly the special effects. Ther read more
Hollow Triumph (1948, Steve Sekely)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Mar 1, 2014
Calling Hollow Triumph a vanity project for star (and producer) Paul Henreid might be a little too easy. He does play a guy who decides to murder someone who looks just like him–sadly, Daniel Fuchs’s script doesn’t have much fun with Henreid in the dual roles. In fact, Fuchs only read more
Father of the Bride (1950, Vincente Minnelli)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Feb 24, 2014
Father of the Bride is such a constant delight, it’s practically over before its problems become clear. First off, it’s definitely about the titular Father–a wonderful Spencer Tracy–who not only narrates but is in almost every scene. The wedding reception, when he’s ch read more
Gigantis, The Fire Monster (1959, Oda Motoyoshi and Hugo Grimaldi)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Feb 24, 2014
There’s something rather amusing about Gigantis, The Fire Monster and not just its idiocy. It’s the American version of the second Godsilla picture and it has some amazingly bad pseudo-science–the monsters are “fire monsters,” which may or may not have been dinosaurs. read more
Dear Heart (1964, Delbert Mann)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Feb 14, 2014
Dear Heart starts awkwardly and ends awkwardly. At the beginning, director Mann and writer Tad Mosel are very deliberately setting up their protagonists and the setting. The awkwardness makes sense. That very solid foundation allows for everything following. The ending, which plays–at least f read more
Bloodlust! (1961, Ralph Brooke)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Feb 10, 2014
What’s startling about Bloodlust! isn’t how bad it gets–the film opens on a docked ship, with the principal cast pretending it’s moving violently so the bad is obvious straight away–but how many not bad elements there are to the film. None of them are enough to make Bl read more
Robocop (1987, Paul Verhoeven), the director’s cut
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Feb 8, 2014
There are a lot of acknowledged accomplishments to Robocop. Pretty much everyone identifies Rob Bottin and Phil Tippett. Bottin handled the startling makeup, Tippett did the awesome stop motion. Director Verhoeven gets a lot of credit–rightly so–and Basil Poledouris’s score is ess read more
The Underground World (1943, Seymour Kneitel)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Feb 7, 2014
The Underground World is absolutely gorgeous. The animation has its issues, but how the animators light their characters and how director Kneitel composes the frames… just breathtaking. The story concerns Lois and Clark on an expedition to an underground cavern. Once they arrive, there’ read more
Dark Stranger (1955, Arthur Ripley)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Feb 5, 2014
Dark Stranger is a high concept story about a writer meeting a character out of his novel. The concept’s ambitious because the script–from Betty Ulius and Joel Murcott–is so thorough. Edmond O’Brien’s writer isn’t a Bohemian who might buy into the idea. He’ read more
The Arctic Giant (1942, Dave Fleischer)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jan 31, 2014
Even if it weren’t for catching all the future films The Arctic Giant influenced, the cartoon would still be a lot of fun. It opens with the discovery of a frozen dinosaur in the the Arctic. Scientists bring it back to Metropolis–King Kong style, but in a freezer–where it goes on read more
Freiheit (1966, George Lucas)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jan 29, 2014
I knew Freiheit was a student film going in–I just didn’t realize the director wasn’t a teenager. The director in question is George Lucas and I thought he was a teenager because the short is so painfully obvious. It’s a “single person running in the woods” stude read more
Volcano (1942, Dave Fleischer)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 24, 2014
Now here’s an awesome outing for Clark and Lois. They’re on assignment to cover a volcano erupting (hence the title); the cartoon opens with a science report on said volcano. It’s a neat sequence, quickly done and well-animated. Fleischer gets a lot of information conveyed immedia read more
Billion Dollar Limited (1942, Dave Fleischer)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 17, 2014
It’s Superman versus a train full of gold thieves. Only not so much. Lois Lane actually battles the thieves themselves in Billion Dollar Limited, while Superman deals with the runaway train. There’s a lot of impressive action in the cartoon, especially given how little dialogue–I read more
The Back of Beyond (1955, Arthur Ripley)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 15, 2014
The Back of Beyond has perfectly good production values–it takes place in the West Indies, at a British protectorate island (it’s a Maugham adaptation, where else would it take place)–but director Ripley doesn’t have much going for him. It’s a play on TV, sure, but he read more
About
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jan 7, 2014
Hello, and welcome, to the Stop Button “About” page. I’m Andrew Wickliffe and I’ve been blogging here so long the site can get a driving permit. I write about movies, comics, and television. On rare occasion, I write longer pieces in hopes of driving traffic to the older pie read more