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.
Crocodile Dundee (1986, Peter Faiman)
The Stop Button Posted by on Mar 25, 2013
When Crocodile Dundee starts, it’s deceptively bold. For roughly the first half of the picture, Linda Kozlowski–without any previous theatrical credits on her filmography–is the protagonist. She’s not really believable as a tenacious newspaper reporter, but she works as Jane read more
Snapshot (1979, Simon Wincer)
The Stop Button Posted by on Mar 22, 2013
Snapshot is one half middling coming of age melodrama and one half not scary thriller. The picture opens with a burnt-out building and a corpse, then goes back to explain. Director Wincer isn’t playful with the flashback–the opening is only there so the viewer is suspicious throughout t read more
The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy (1915, Willis O’Brien)
The Stop Button Posted by on Mar 21, 2013
Until the Missing Link shows up, The Dinosaur and the Missing Link is strangely realistic. Director O’Brien’s stop motion creations–he always uses long shot–seem like actors, like any other silent with a terrible print. It’s eerie. Even the gorilla-like Missing Link oc read more
Back to the Future (1985, Robert Zemeckis) (1)
The Stop Button Posted by on Mar 14, 2013
Back to the Future gives the impression of being very economical in terms of its narrative… but it really isn’t. Zemeckis just does such a great job immediately establishing the fifties setting, even though there’s less than fifty minutes before the third act, the film feels more read more
Romancing the Stone (1984, Robert Zemeckis)
The Stop Button Posted by on Mar 12, 2013
So much of Romancing the Stone is perfect, when the film has bumps, they stand out. Even worse, it closes on one of those bumps. The finale is so poorly handled, one has to wonder if it’s the result of a rewrite. Anyway, on to the glowing stuff. The film’s a technical marvel. Zemeckis&# read more
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976, John Carpenter)
The Stop Button Posted by on Mar 6, 2013
The titular assault in Assault on Precinct 13 doesn’t start until just over halfway through (and not at Precinct 13, but whatever). Until that point, Carpenter methodically lays out the elements to synthesize at the sieged police station. He introduces a tense gang situation, a new lieutenant read more
Superman and the Mole-Men (1951, Lee Sholem)
The Stop Button Posted by on Mar 5, 2013
Superman and the Mole Men is somewhat hard to watch–and not because of the goofy mole people costumes. The bad guys in the film aren’t the mole men, but the evil redneck townspeople who hunt them down. Mole Men runs less than an hour (a theatrical pilot for the “Adventures of Supe read more
Black Moon (1934, Roy William Neill)
The Stop Button Posted by on Mar 4, 2013
Before getting into all the great things about Black Moon, I need to talk about the racism. There’s the general thirties racism, with the black sidekick (Clarence Muse) being constantly cartoonish. But the film’s entire plot is racist–it’s about a Caribbean island full of vo read more
Dracula (1931, Tod Browning), the digest version
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 28, 2013
Even though it still falls apart at the end, this truncated, eight millimeter version of Dracula is better than the regular version. It’s exactly what I was hoping for from these Castle Films digests. All of the long dialogue scenes are gone. There’s no explanation of vampires, the enti read more
Frankenstein (1931, James Whale), the digest version
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 26, 2013
The eight millimeter digest version of Frankenstein removes all but three main characters. Colin Clive gets the most time, though loses all subplots and character, with Boris Karloff probably coming in second. It’s odd to watch Frankenstein and have the monster make so little impression but i read more
Cat People (1942, Jacques Tourneur)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 22, 2013
How to describe Cat People…. When a swell, blond American (Kent Smith) meets a dark (but not too dark) Eastern European woman (Simone Simon), she rouses all sorts of non-apple pie passions in him. Being a swell guy, he pressures her into marrying him–she’s clearly emotionally dist read more
Breaking Away (1979, Peter Yates)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 21, 2013
For a “traditional” underdog story, Breaking Away is exceeding complex. It opens with Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern and Jackie Earle Haley; neither Steve Tesich’s script nor Yates’s direction emphasizes any over another. Actually, Quaid’s loudmouth get read more
Breaking Even (1932, Aubrey Scotto)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 15, 2013
Breaking Even has a number of surprises. Its star, Tom Howard, came from vaudeville and it shows. Not in a bad way, the short’s structured for his style. The only bad thing about Even is its editing. Director Scotto can direct dialogue sequences fine, but when he’s got to move the camer read more
Wildcat Bus (1940, Frank Woodruff)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 14, 2013
Wildcat Bus is a tepid b picture about corruption in the hired car business. A group of bad guys–they run an unlicensed car firm–go after sweet old Oscar O’Shea’s bus company. It all hinges on a bankrupted blue blood (Charles Lang), his trusty sidekick (Paul Guilfoyle) and O read more
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966, Bill Melendez)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 13, 2013
“It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” is near perfect. Director Melendez and writer Charles M. Schulz create this beautiful little experience. The special’s excellence is in its structure. “Pumpkin” has the main plot–Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin, w read more
Number One with a Bullet (1987, Jack Smight)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 12, 2013
With a larger budget–and a different director–Number One with a Bullet might succeed. It’s a wry spoof of cop movies and TV shows, pairing crazy man Robert Carradine and urbane Billy Dee Williams. One has to assume Carradine’s casting against Revenge of the Nerds-type is par read more
The Senator Was Indiscreet (1947, George S. Kaufman)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 8, 2013
The Senator Was Indiscreet is a fun enough little film. It’s little for a few reasons; sadly, the primary one is the budget. Enough of the film takes place in William Powell’s hotel room, one would think it’s a play adaptation. The story is more ambitious than the finished film ca read more
Carrie (1976, Brian De Palma)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 7, 2013
In terms of De Palma’s direction, Carrie is a little bit of a mess. It’s a combination of Hitchcock as camp–which really cuts into the effectiveness of the finale–more religious imagery than, say, The Ten Commandments and, finally, some truly brilliant composition from De Pa read more
Real Genius (1985, Martha Coolidge)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 6, 2013
It’s hard to know where to start with Real Genius. It runs just over a hundred minutes, but gets so much done in the first forty, then so much different stuff done in the next thirty, the remainder is almost entirely separate. The plot evolves, expanding as events unfold. Genius isn’t i read more
Sons of Liberty (1939, Michael Curtiz)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 25, 2013
Despite Michael Curtiz directing and Claude Rains starring–Curtiz does better than Rains–Sons of Liberty is a rather tepid little short. Rains plays a Jewish proto-American (circa 1776) who sacrifices all for the United States. He even dies penniless because he won’t sign a docume read more