Brenda Starr, Reporter (1945, Wallace Fox), Chapter 1: Hot News!
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 2, 2017
Brenda Starr, Reporter is all action. Sure, there’s some scenes of lead Joan Woodbury sitting at her desk, but she’s just waiting to hear about more action. The chapter starts with a building on fire. Woodbury and her photographer, Syd Saylor, drive out from the newspaper office, racing to get ther read more
The Defender (1957, Robert Mulligan)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 1, 2017
The Defender is exquisite. It’s a two-part courtroom drama from “Studio One,” so Reginald Rose’s teleplay has some major constraints. There’s budget, there’s content, there’s plotting, there’s pacing. Not to mention it’s two separate broadcasts. No matter how well the two parts of read more
The Beguiled (1971, Don Siegel)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 1, 2017
While The Beguiled is a thriller, the film keeps the thrills exceptionally grounded. The film’s set during the Civil War, with wounded Yankee sniper Clint Eastwood taking refuge at a girls school in Confederate territory. The school is quite literally set aside from the war. The war is outside the read more
Doin’ Time in Times Square (1991, Charlie Ahearn)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 29, 2017
Doin’ Time in Times Square is forty minutes of footage Ahearn shot out of his Times Square apartment building’s window. Shot over three years, Ahearn cuts the street scenes with home movie footage. Life inside the apartment. Ahearn’s adorable family growing, holidays, parties, sitcoms. Meanwhile, read more
Actor | Eleanor Parker, Part 1: The Dream Factory
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 27, 2017
In June 1941, right before turning nineteen years old, Eleanor Parker signed on as a contract player at Warner Bros. She had just finished a year at the Pasadena Playhouse. Parker started acting in high school and had been dodging studio screen tests since she was fifteen; she wanted to continue de read more
Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941, William Witney and John English)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 26, 2017
About seventy percent of Adventures of Captain Marvel is narratively useless. Nothing occurring in chapters two through ten has an effect on how the story actually turns out. The serial has a great first chapter involving a tomb robbing archeological expedition in Thailand. Radio journalist Frank C read more
The Streetfighter’s Last Revenge (1974, Ozawa Shigehiro)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 25, 2017
The title, The Street Fighter’s Last Revenge, doesn’t really refer to anything in the film itself. The Street Fighter is Sonny Chiba. He’s gone for psychotic killer karate man (from the first film, Last Revenge is the third) to sauve, romantic ladies man. Complete with a secret room to put on read more
Sister Street Fighter (1974, Yamaguchi Kazuhiko)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 25, 2017
Sister Street Fighter should be campy. With the constant horns in Kikuchi Shunsuke’s score, lead Shiomi Etsuko’s colorful outfit, villain Amatsu Bin doing an Elvis impersonation, the countless and intentionally weird martial arts villains… it ought to be campy. But it’s not, because somehow read more
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017, Jon Watts)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 24, 2017
If Spider-Man: Homecoming isn’t the best film with six credited screenwriters, it’s got to be near the top. Additionally, the film’s got director (and one the Sinister Six–wokka wokka–screenwriters) Watts, who kind of manually binds the film together scene by scene. There’s so much different read more
Return of the Street Fighter (1974, Ozawa Shigehiro)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 23, 2017
Return of the Street Fighter almost stages a third act rally. It comes so close, then it doesn’t. After a string of boring fight scenes, director Ozawa finally gets in a couple good ones. Lead Sonny Chiba against one adversary, instead of a half dozen, two dozen, or four dozen. The failure to do bi read more
Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941, John English and William Witney), Chapter 12: Captain Marvel’s Secret
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 22, 2017
Captain Marvel’s Secret opens with yet another lackluster cliffhanger resolve. No reason to change it up at the end, apparently. The chapter has a lot to do in sixteen minutes. It’s got to reveal the evil Scorpion’s identity, stop the Scorpion’s evil plan, and maybe do something regarding Frank read more
Sentence of Death (1953, Matt Harlib)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 22, 2017
Sentence of Death unfolds gradually. The action mostly follows Betsy Palmer, playing a naughty blue blood who the tabloids love to cover. She’s slumming it and having a nice private dinner at a drug store. She’s there when someone holds it up and kills the owner. Enter cops Gene Lyons and Ralph read more
Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941, John English and William Witney), Chapter 11:
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 21, 2017
Valley of Death is the penultimate chapter of Adventures of Captain Marvel. It’s in a rush to finish. The cliffhanger resolution is boring, though leads to some decent effects shots. The cast ends up in a hotel somewhere, planning to return to Thailand and the tombs from the first chapter. Villain read more
Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941, John English and William Witney), Chapter 10: Doom Ship
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 20, 2017
There’s nothing nice to say about Doom Ship’s opening cliffhanger resolution other than it’s short and leads into an energetic fight scene for Frank Coghlan Jr. More than ever, Coghlan’s got the wrong timing for turning into Tom Tyler’s Captain Marvel this chapter. Unlike the times when Coghlan’s read more
Two-Faced Woman (1941, George Cukor)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 20, 2017
Two-Faced Woman is the story of a successful New York magazine editor, played by Melvyn Douglas, who marries his ski instructor (Greta Garbo) while on vacation. It’s a whirlwind courtship, with one condition of the marriage (for Garbo) being Douglas is giving up New York. Turns out he’s not and read more
Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941, John English and William Witney), Chapter 9: Dead Man’s Trap
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 19, 2017
Dead Man’s Trap is, I guess, a bridging chapter. It depends on what’s next. Otherwise it’s a treading water chapter. It picks up from the previous chapter’s “cliffhanger” (quotations because it’s more of a “beware the cliff 150 meters away” than anything else) and gives George Pembroke read more
Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941, John English and William Witney), Chapter 8: Boomerang
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 18, 2017
Boomerang is the best chapter of Captain Marvel yet. Not because of Captain Marvel action–there’s some, but it’s perfunctory–rather it’s the plotting. Boomerang springboards off something in the previous chapter (unrelated to the cliffhanger), sort of narratively hopping over something. That read more
Justice League (2017, Zack Snyder)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 18, 2017
Justice League exists, whether intentionally or not, outside a certain kind of critical examination. Director Snyder didn’t finish post-production. Or, at least, when the studio demanded lots of reshoots, Snyder wasn’t involved in a creative capacity. The job went to Joss Whedon, who gets a co-writ read more
Dressed to Kill (1980, Brian De Palma)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 17, 2017
Dressed to Kill has oodles of style. It doesn’t have a lot else going for it–a lot of the acting, sure, but the acting never pays off for anyone–but it does have style. Director De Palma and cinematographer Ralf D. Bode create an ethereal New York for the action to play out in. The film opens read more
Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941, John English and William Witney), Chapter 7: Human Targets
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 17, 2017
Starting Human Targets, I couldn’t remember what cliffhanger needed to be resolved. It’s not a good one. More of the “Tom Tyler is bad at being a superhero” same. Once it gets resolved, with William ‘Billy’ Benedict shooting the breeze with Tyler and asking zero questions about why Tyler’s read more