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.
Soldiers in White (1942, B. Reeves Eason)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 29, 2011
Everett Dodd’s editing makes Soldiers in White painful to watch. Some of the fault is director Eason’s, of course. His insert close-ups are awful. Given Soldiers is half comedy and half Army propaganda film (the titular soldiers are Army doctors), it’s hard to believe Eason was worried about runnin read more
So You Think You Need Glasses (1942, Richard L. Bare)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 27, 2011
Here’s a strange one. So You Think You Need Glasses starts off as an instructional short about common eyesight problems and their solutions. It’s of particular note for the opthamologist’s office… which sports much of the same equipment in 1942 it does today. Art Gilmore narrates the entire read more
Mouse Wreckers (1948, Chuck Jones)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 22, 2011
I have some not insignificant problems with Mouse Wreckers. First, the cartoon is almost entirely beautiful. Great backgrounds, great talking mice, almost everything. Except the mice’s victim, a cat. The animation on the cat is fine, but the design of the cat itself is awful. It frequently di read more
Beetlejuice (1988, Tim Burton)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 21, 2011
How did Beetlejuice ever get past the studio suits? It really says something about eighties mainstream filmmaking and today’s. It’s not just the absence of a likable protagonist—Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are the main characters for the first forty-five minutes, then hand the film off to Winona read more
The Golf Specialist (1930, Monte Brice)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 20, 2011
The Golf Specialist has a very odd beginning. W.C. Fields doesn’t even show up for almost three minutes (significant in a twenty minute short); instead the film follows Shirley Grey as the house detective’s wandering wife. It’s a set-up for later, but it’s an odd way to start. The short’s read more
Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985, Jerry Paris)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 16, 2011
Julie Brown shows up at the end of Police Academy 2, which doesn’t make much sense since her character is only in one other scene and she doesn’t have a single line. I was left wondering if she didn’t have a bigger role and ended up cut out (she would have been Steve Guttenberg read more
Conrad the Sailor (1942, Chuck Jones)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 15, 2011
I wasn’t sure what I was going to say about Conrad the Sailor when it started. It seemed pretty simple–Conrad is a lame cat sailor and Daffy Duck makes fun of him. It was a simple case of Daffy being a bully. Maybe I could have done something about how cartoon icons are often callous an read more
One Crazy Summer (1986, Savage Steve Holland)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 14, 2011
When Demi Moore gives a film’s best performance, it’s obviously not a good film. One Crazy Summer is apparently Holland’s attempt at doing a zany teen vacation picture. It’s the kind of movie “USA Up All Night” wouldn’t have bothered playing because it’s too boring. But the real problem read more
Readin’ and Writin’ (1932, Robert F. McGowan)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 13, 2011
Readin’ and Writin’ opens on an incredibly unrealistic note–teacher June Marlowe is looking forward to the school year starting. Even ignoring the worst students in the bunch, none of them are sweet or nice. But Marlowe (and the class) have to contend with Kendall McComas’s read more
The Secret of Convict Lake (1951, Michael Gordon)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 9, 2011
The Secret of Convict Lake is a depressing affair. I knew it was Glenn Ford and Gene Tierney, but Ethel Barrymore’s in it too. So you have these three fantastic actors—Ford and Tierney even muster enough chemistry to accomplish their ludicrous romance—and an otherwise lousy Western. The film opens read more
Easter Yeggs (1947, Robert McKimson)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 8, 2011
I’m sorry, I think I missed something… did Bugs Bunny just kill the Easter Bunny? Or did he just maim him? Easter Yeggs ought to be a lot better. It’s got an Easter Bunny who conspires to get out of his duties on an annual basis by acting emo, it’s got Elmer Fudd and it’s got a psychotic infant read more
Sundown (1941, Henry Hathaway)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 7, 2011
The majority of Sundown is excellent. Hathaway sort of mixes the Western and British colonial adventure genre with a World War II propaganda piece. New Mexico stands in for Kenya—it’s an interesting war film because there aren’t any Americans. Lead Bruce Cabot is playing a Canadian. Cabot does read more
Screwball Squirrel (1944, Tex Avery)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 6, 2011
Screwball Squirrel opens with the protagonist mocking a Disney-like cartoon squirrel and sending him packing. The Disney-like squirrel sounds and looks enough like Thumper from Bambi I forgot Thumper was a rabbit. This moment establishes the cartoon—because the protagonist, the never named Screwy read more
The Mating Season (1951, Mitchell Leisen)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 5, 2011
The Mating Season is an awkward social comedy of errors. I say awkward because to make the plot work, Gene Tierney has to act selfishly every time she’s supposed to be garnering sympathy. Thinking about it now, the film never even resolves her flirtations with the guy out to ruin her husband read more
The Land Unknown (1957, Virgil W. Vogel)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 2, 2011
The Land Unknown has it all—a guy in a Tyrannosaurus Rex suit (the dinosaur’s roar is suspiciously similar to Godzilla’s), lizards standing in for dinosaurs, awful rear screen projection of those lizards to make them seem large, CinemaScope, misogyny, torture, a homicidal rapist being portrayed read more
It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958, Edward L. Cahn)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 31, 2011
I watched It! The Terror from Beyond Space because I understood it’s widely considered (look at that passive voice) a precursor to Alien. Any such connection is tenuous at best. I also thought Ray Harryhausen did the special effects. No, no, he did not. If It! were a production of a middle sc read more
A Night at the Movies (1937, Roy Rowland)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 30, 2011
A Night at the Movies opens with Robert Benchley in a domestic situation (Betty Ross Clarke does a fine job playing his wife). They’re trying to figure out what movie to go see. It’s a gently amusing scene—each has seen movies without the other so they’re trying to agree on an unseen one. It’s read more
Dangerous Partners (1945, Edward L. Cahn)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 29, 2011
Much of Dangerous Partners‘s excellence comes from the script. Edmund L. Hartmann adapted Eleanor Perry’s story, which Marion Parsonnet then from wrote the screenplay from–in other words, it’s hard to know who’s responsible for the script’s brilliance. Partners h read more
Alien (1979, Ridley Scott)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 26, 2011
Can you even watch Alien if you have epilepsy? After about a hundred minutes of elegant direction, Scott relies on this strobe effect for the remainder of the film’s running time. Yes, it makes a disquieting effect, but it gets old in a few minutes and he uses it for at least fifteen. And, strobe read more
Balloon Land (1935, Ub Iwerks)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 25, 2011
For lack of a better word, Balloon Land is disturbed. It’s a cartoon about a magical place where everyone is a living balloon. Not just people, but plants too. Objects are solid though. The new balloon people–Iwerks opens showing the reproductive process–are made through one creat read more