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.
Dog Day Afternoon (1975, Sidney Lumet)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 8, 2010
Besides Al Pacino, there are other actors in Dog Day Afternoon. Some of them give fantastic performances too. But, even with those fantastic performances, every time Pacino is alone on screen, whether closeup or not, monologue or not, it feels like there’s no one else in the film besides him. read more
Criminal Court (1946, Robert Wise)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 3, 2010
If you took a film noir and removed the noir, you might have something like Criminal Court. The plot is noir. An upstanding attorney (Tom Conway) accidentally kills mobster (Robert Armstrong) and runs off, unknowingly leaving his girlfriend (Martha O’Driscoll) to take the wrap. What does Conw read more
The Mummy’s Ghost (1944, Reginald Le Borg)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 1, 2010
The Mummy’s Ghost is, with a couple problems, really good for a monster movie (and leagues ahead of Universal’s other 1940s Mummy features). It’s not so much about the Mummy as the victims and the investigation (but the police investigation, not the scientific–and everyone b read more
Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1937, Hanns Schwarz)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 30, 2010
As Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel enters its third act, there’s this startling suggestion… one of the good guys has been sleeping with Robespierre to get in his good graces. I’m unaware of such an overt implication in any Hollywood films of 1937. Unfortunately, that singularity i read more
Homicide Bureau (1939, Charles C. Coleman)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 27, 2010
Oh, those silly liberal apologists, not letting police detective Bruce Cabot beat confessions out of suspects. Don’t they understand these criminals are really working for the Nazis? Okay, Homicide Bureau never actually says Nazis, just warring foreign powers, but they mean the Nazis. The fun read more
Ghost Ship (1952, Vernon Sewell)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 9, 2010
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a horror film not interested in being scary before Ghost Ship. It seems like a strange concept, but certainly one with a lot of possibilities. Unfortunately, I’m not sure Sewell knew he was making a scary movie without a single scare. I don’t real read more
The Ghost Walks (1934, Frank R. Strayer)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 6, 2010
I’m not sure when the “old dark house” mystery film started–I haven’t seen any silent entries in the genre but I imagine there must be some, especially since the genre also appears to have been popular on stage. The Ghost Walks, in 1934–five years into talkies read more
Brief Encounter (1945, David Lean)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 4, 2010
For the majority of Brief Encounter, I had very little opinion of Lean’s direction. It’s incredibly dispassionate and functional, but very solid. I think I assumed it’d be innovative (along the lines of the Archers) but it’s not. Very realistic, very British. Until the secon read more
The Italian Job (1969, Peter Collinson)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 2, 2010
What a strange film. I’d never really heard of it, past the title, so… I didn’t know what to expect, but even if I’d known something about it, I doubt I could have expected it. Collinson is a fantastic Panavision director, so the Italian Job is always watchable, even through read more
The Four Seasons (1981, Alan Alda)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jul 14, 2010
I didn’t read anything about The Four Seasons before watching it–I didn’t even know it was Carol Burnett in a dramatic role (she’s fantastic)–and if I had, maybe I would have had some idea where Alda was taking the film. Because he doesn’t take it where I was exp read more
Young Frankenstein (1974, Mel Brooks)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jul 7, 2010
Young Frankenstein does not feel like a Mel Brooks film. It’s so startlingly well-directed, one could almost believe he didn’t direct it himself. Brooks, for the film, has this way of keeping the camera mostly stationary and letting his actors and the sets do all the work–one can& read more
Clue (1985, Jonathan Lynn)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jul 5, 2010
I didn’t see Clue in the theater, so I haven’t got a… I have no idea how it played without the multiple endings. While it’s a cute idea–a different ending depending on where you see the film, all of them together on home video release–it gets tedious, especially read more
The Innocents (1961, Jack Clayton)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jul 2, 2010
I don’t get it. When I watched the film, I had no idea The Innocents was considered some masterpiece of British cinema. I’m actually rather surprised by the acclaim. Similarly, I’m shocked Deborah Kerr considered her performance in this film her best. It’s not a bad performa read more
Dr. Strange (1978, Philip DeGuere)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jun 16, 2010
Dr. Strange aired in September, Superman came out in December… and they both have the same flying techniques, at least for couples, though Superman does have a longer flying sequences… Dr. Strange just kind of hints at it. A number of things put Dr. Strange above the standard seventies read more
King Kong Lives (1986, John Guillermin)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jun 14, 2010
Is calling a redneck hateful redundant? All other problems (acting, script), the biggest problem with King Kong Lives is how unpleasant the film is to watch. With the exception of the good guys (there are three of them), everyone else is a really bad person… it’s incredibly simplistic i read more
Psycho III (1986, Anthony Perkins)
The Stop Button Posted by on May 19, 2010
I’m a little upset. Anthony Perkins only directed two pictures and one of them–this one–was written by Charles Edward Pogue. Pogue’s a bit of punchline, but at least most of Psycho III is well-plotted. His dialogue, especially at the beginning, is iffy, but it might also hav read more
Rocky IV (1985, Sylvester Stallone)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 23, 2010
I rarely worry about how I’m going to get 250 words about a film. Rocky IV probably features 251 words of dialogue. Well, closer to 251 than not, anyway. Really, what is there to say about this one? Stallone directs it poorly? Stallone substitutes montages and music videos for actual narrativ read more
The Mummy (1959, Terence Fisher)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 4, 2010
I’ve long held there are no good filmic Dracula adaptations. I’m now going to say there aren’t any good Mummy pictures after the Karloff one. This Hammer production was an officially licensed remake of the Universal production… only not the Karloff title, instead the inferio read more
Tron (1982, Steven Lisberger)
The Stop Button Posted by on Mar 20, 2010
It’s easier to stomach Tron if you think about it as a video track to Wendy Carlos’s score. While there’s some technical innovation (shooting actors on green screen, now a norm, got some of its starts with Tron, not to mention the endless CG–except in Tron, at least it was f read more
Q (1982, Larry Cohen)
The Stop Button Posted by on Mar 1, 2010
Q is sort of ripe for a remake. Not because this version has shoddy special effects–while the film’s still effective with them, they look like something out of the 1925 Lost World–but because there are three great roles in the film and nearly a fourth. Michael Moriarty’s top read more