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.
Rashomon (1950, Kurosawa Akira)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 4, 2016
Where to start with Rashomon? Starting at the beginning means talking about the bookends–three strangers stranded in the rain, two telling the third different versions of the same story, each ostensibly true. The rain pours down around them, drowning out their voices. Rashomon is a film witho read more
The Postman (1997, Kevin Costner)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 2, 2016
Where The Postman succeeds, besides with the performances, most of its technical aspects, is with director Costner’s ability to find each character’s emotional reality in a scene. He achieves a sort of alchemist’s miracle, but not with lead into gold, but with saccharine into subl read more
Captain America: Civil War (2016, Anthony Russo and Joe Russo)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 2, 2016
I wasn’t aware it was possible, but go-to Marvel superhero movie composer Henry Jackman is actually getting worse as he does more of these movies. His score for Captain America: Civil War is laughable, which is too bad, because if the film hit the thematic beats Jackman failed to achieve? Wel read more
Baby Boom (1987, Charles Shyer)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Sep 1, 2016
The first half of Baby Boom is this incredibly efficient story about career woman Diane Keaton deciding she wants to be a mom to a baby she inherits. Is inherit the right word? Probably not, but Keaton’s character can’t figure out how to change a diaper (though she can later milk a cow read more
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977, John Boorman)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 30, 2016
Oh, no, Ennio Morricone did the music for Exorcist II: The Heretic. I feel kind of bad now because the music is not good and I like Ennio Morricone. I’m sure I’ve liked something cinematographer William A. Fraker photographed too, but his photography in Heretic is atrocious. Because it& read more
The Oscar (1966, Russell Rouse)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 27, 2016
The Oscar is a spectacular kind of awful. It’s the perfect storm of content, casting and technical ineptitude. Director Rouse probably doesn’t have a single good shot in the entire film. It might not even be possible with Joseph Ruttenberg’s photography and the maybe studio televi read more
Sleepaway Camp (1983, Robert Hiltzik)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 25, 2016
Sleepaway Camp has two things going for it on a consistent basis–Benjamin Davis’s cinematography (it’s not flashy, but it’s exceptionally competent) and the special effects. There aren’t a lot of gore shots in Camp, but director Hiltzik makes sure they count. He can read more
The Mangler (1995, Tobe Hooper), the director’s cut
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 24, 2016
The Mangler is terrible. One hopes the rumor producer Anant Singh replaced director Hooper is true because the film’s bad enough and desperate enough, you occasionally want to cut it some slack. You can’t, because it’s terrible, but you still kind of wish you could. Here’s t read more
The Dunwich Horror (1970, Daniel Haller)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 24, 2016
There’s a handful of good things about The Dunwich Horror. They can’t overcome the bad things, but they’re still pretty neat. The script, at least for a while, is fairly nimble. There’s a lot of bad exposition from old dudes Ed Begley and Lloyd Bochner, but the younger folks read more
The Day of the Locust (1975, John Schlesinger)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 22, 2016
The Day of the Locust is a gentle film, at least in terms of Schlesinger’s direction, Conrad L. Hall’s cinematography and John Barry’s score. The film’s softly lit but with a whole lot of focus. Schlesinger wants to make sure the audience gets to see every part of the actors read more
Lethal Weapon 3 (1992, Richard Donner)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 21, 2016
Lethal Weapon 3 is an expert action movie. Director Donner, cinematographer Jan de Bont, editors Robert Brown and Battle Davis do phenomenal work. Even though the cop action thriller plot of the film is its least compelling–dirty ex-cop Stuart Wilson is funding real estate development through read more
Midnight (1939, Mitchell Leisen)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 16, 2016
Midnight is a rather smart film. Screenwriters Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder are able to do a whole bunch of plot twists–always through comedic means–because of how they’ve got the film structured. The film opens with Claudette Colbert arriving in Paris, penniless. Taxi driver read more
A Perfect World (1993, Clint Eastwood)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 10, 2016
A Perfect World runs almost two hours and twenty minutes (it does with end credits). The last act of the film is a seventeen or so minute showdown in real time. Until that point in the film, John Lee Hancock’s script flirts with occasional sequences in real time, but there’s a lot of su read more
Kindergarten Cop 2 (2016, Don Michael Paul)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 10, 2016
Kindergarten Cop 2 doesn’t provoke a lot of reaction. It’s terrible, sure, it’s incompetent in parts, it’s got a lousy script and some really bad acting, but why wouldn’t it? It’s a direct-to-video sequel twenty-six years after the first entry, has nothing to do read more
The Thirteenth Floor (1999, Josef Rusnak)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 10, 2016
It’d be hard to call The Thirteenth Floor a missed opportunity because that statement suggests there was some promise to it. There’s no promise anywhere near Thirteenth Floor. But it does have some gorgeous set decoration and, presumably, production design from Kirk M. Petruccelli. The read more
Three Kings (1999, David O. Russell)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 9, 2016
Three Kings ought to appeal to every one of my liberal affections–director Russell very seriously wants to look at the Gulf War and how it failed the people it should have been protecting. Over and over, Russell goes out of his way to make the American soldiers take responsibility. Not for th read more
Dances with Wolves (1990, Kevin Costner)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 8, 2016
From the start, director Costner embrues Dances with Wolves with melancholic tragedy. Even as Costner’s protagonist–a Union soldier reassigned to the frontier–travels west, seeing startling natural beauty, which Costner and cinematographer Dean Semler visualize carefully, enthusia read more
Café Society (2016, Woody Allen)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 8, 2016
Woody Allen opens Café Society himself, with a voiceover. It’s a deeper voice mix than usual for Allen–who doesn’t appear in the film–and even though he’s doing expository narration, there’s an intentional distance in that deeper voice. Allen’s not the star read more
The Tiger: An Old Hunter’s Tale (2015, Park Hoon-jung)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 7, 2016
The Tiger: An Old Hunter’s Tale is a rather ambitious piece of work from director Park. Maybe too ambitious. It’s not just about juxtaposing old aged hunter Choi Min-sik against the last tiger in Korea (the film’s set during Japanese occupation when the Japanese were having all th read more
JFK (1991, Oliver Stone)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Aug 7, 2016
JFK is a protracted experience. It runs over three hours, it has no real narrative structure–the film opens with the Kennedy assassination and an introduction to the principal characters (and some of the possible conspirators, always played quite well by a guest star), then jumps ahead three read more