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.
Alice Cans the Cannibals (1925, Walt Disney)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 10, 2012
The animation is a strange mix of great and mediocre in Alice Cans the Cannibals. The principals, whether it’s Julius (the titular Alice’s sidekick), the variety of animals they encounter or the cannibals presumably out to eat Alice (though why they’re chasing Julius, a cat, is ne read more
The Iron Mule (1925, Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle and Grover Jones)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 8, 2012
What The Iron Mule lacks in plotting, it makes up for in exuberance. Unfortunately, the exuberance isn’t omnipresent. It’s like directors Arbuckle and Jones felt the need for gags, which don’t work, but had modern fun with the physical comedy. Almost all of the physical comedy is read more
Chili Weather (1963, Friz Freleng)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 7, 2012
I’m missing why Speedy Gonzales is the good guy in Chili Weather. He’s trying to steal food (the theory being the factory has food so it should give food to his friends) and he tortures the guard cat. If one got really creative, he or she could interpret Weather as commentary on the Mex read more
The Miracle Water (1914, Eleuterio Rodolfi)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 5, 2012
The Miracle Water is so exceptionally confusing–and it’s only ten minutes–I wonder if something had been lost or if the theaters handed out a plot summary. In fact, it’s so confounding, I read some descriptions online and they characterize the film as family friendly fare. A read more
Midnight Crossing (1988, Roger Holzberg)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 4, 2012
Midnight Crossing is a terribly written piece of garbage, but there’s some definite potential to it. It takes forever for the potential to show. The movie opens with one of the worst directed, worst written action sequences I can think of. Then it flashes forward to modern day and it’s bad, but read more
The Booze Hangs High (1930, Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 3, 2012
It takes The Booze Hangs High nearly half its running time to have its first gag… but it’s worth the wait. An adorable little duckling tells its mother it needs to go number two. Without dialogue or visual followthrough, but the message is clear. And, all of a sudden, Booze starts getti read more
Police Academy (1984, Hugh Wilson)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 2, 2012
I forgot how loose eighties comedies are in terms of filmmaking and narrative. I don’t think Wilson has a single good shot in the film. The best ones are workmanlike at best and the worst… well, he has these absurdly weak low angle closeups on David Graf, either to make him look tall or read more
Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914, Henry Lehrman)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 1, 2012
Okay, Kid Auto Races at Venice makes a little more sense now… it was ad-libbed. Charlie Chaplin really was just doing annoying gags in front of people who are watching a baby-cart race. Most the film consists of Chaplin acting like a jerk. He’s funny and appealing enough, but the short& read more
It’s a Gift (1923, Hugh Fay)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 29, 2011
It’s a Gift has such a great plot, it’s impossible it’s going to succeed. There’s a gasoline crisis so the losing oil companies decide to get rid of petroleum all together and instead use a synthetic. The oil barons approach ‘Snub’ Pollard, an inventor. The inven read more
Willow (1988, Ron Howard)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 28, 2011
I wonder if Willow’s lack of popularity has anything to do with the protagonist not fitting the regular sci-fi and fantasy and magic standard. Not because Warwick Davis is a dwarf, but because his character is so non-traditional. He’s not an idealistic youth, or a hidden prince… he’s a farmer read more
Frigid Hare (1949, Chuck Jones)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 27, 2011
Frigid Hare ends on a strange note. It looks like Bugs Bunny and his newfound penguin friend are walking in place in front of the Northern Lights. The shot’s disconcerting since the rest of the cartoon is so strong. Bugs is in Antarctica, having made a wrong turn and wasted a few days of his read more
The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1986, Jeannot Szwarc)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 26, 2011
If it weren’t for director Szwarc actually being French, The Murders in the Rue Morgue might be the perfect post-modern adaptation. It’s Americans pretending (without accents, thankfully) to be French. Poe, an American, had never been to France when he wrote the original story. So there read more
A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965, Bill Melendez)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 22, 2011
Two things stick out in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”. First, Charlie Brown is a bit of a drag. Charles M. Schulz, writing the script, initially sets up Charlie Brown as the Scrooge of “Christmas”. While that condition changes a little–eventually, Charlie Brown is the vi read more
The Windblown Hare (1949, Robert McKimson)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 20, 2011
The Windblown Hare is fairly intolerable. Even if the animation wasn’t lazy–maybe Warner slashed the budget after finding out what McKimson wanted to do–there are still two and a half major problems. First, and most surprisingly, Mel Blanc’s Three Little Pigs voices are terr read more
Hotel (1967, Richard Quine)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 16, 2011
Hotel comes from that strange period of Hollywood cinema just between the Technicolor melodramas and the seventies realism. The film’s still in Technicolor of course–and Charles Lang’s cinematography is fantastic. He makes the New Orleans location shooting look just wondrous. But read more
Dry and Thirsty (1920, Craig Hutchinson)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 15, 2011
Dry and Thirsty is split into two distinct parts. The first part, set on a boardwalk and beach, mostly features protagonist Billy Bletcher. Bletcher, who also wrote the short, resembles Chaplin. The mustache isn’t identical, but it’s close, and the mannerisms suggest a very American Cha read more
Airport (1970, George Seaton)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 14, 2011
While it did start the seventies disaster genre, Airport barely qualifies. The first hour of the film is excruciating soap opera melodrama—airport chief Burt Lancaster is stuck in a loveless marriage with harpy Dana Wynter, so he’s got a flirtation going with widowed Jean Seberg. His sister, played read more
The Mouse That Jack Built (1959, Robert McKimson)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 13, 2011
A prerequisite for The Mouse That Jack Built is probably working knowledge of “The Jack Benny Program.” I have none, though I think I’ve heard the radio show before. But I certainly do not remember it enough for Mouse to make sense. It’s a strange concept for a cartoon– read more
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988, David Zucker)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 12, 2011
Oh, okay… it’s less than ninety minutes. I was wondering why The Naked Gun felt so fast. It’s because it’s short. That observation isn’t a negative one—the film is a constant delight, with Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker (and Pat Proft) coming up with a good laugh or gag every thirty to forty seconds. read more
Back Stage (1923, Robert F. McGowan)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 8, 2011
Back Stage opens with a vaudeville owner, played by William Gillespie, coming to town. Once the show’s presence is established, the narrative moves to the gang. They’ve turned a car into a donkey-powered double decker bus. It’s an extremely complex contraption. It doesn’t s read more