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.
Star in the Night (1945, Don Siegel)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 22, 2011
Star in the Night opens with cowboys, but it’s not a cowboy story. It’s a nativity told at a roadside motel. The dialogue for the cowboys is so bad, one has to wonder if they’re just cowboy impersonators and that detail got cut. The film proper begins when J. Carrol Naish meets up with angel-in-dis read more
Murder on the Orient Express (1974, Sidney Lumet)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 21, 2011
There are two significant problems with Murder on the Orient Express. Unfortunately, both of them are aspects of the film’s genre. Well, one of them is an aspect of the genre and the other is related to the film’s extremely high quality acting. So, neither of them are “problems” in the traditional read more
Vincent (1982, Tim Burton)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 15, 2011
I’ve probably known of Vincent since Batman but I’ve never seen it. It also turns out I didn’t know much about it–I though Vincent Price starred in it (he narrates) and I thought it was live action (it’s stop-motion). Price reading Burton’s narration–it’s a beautiful bit of rhyming, read more
Over the Edge (1979, Jonathan Kaplan)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 11, 2011
Over the Edge is explosive. Sorry, maybe that statement is a little glib–but it is literally explosive. More cars blow up in Over the Edge than a season of “The A-Team.” I think Kaplan was going for dramatic effect, but it’s hard to say. Kaplan’s actually the least int read more
Within the Woods (1978, Sam Raimi)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 10, 2011
While Within the Woods is well-known as a precursor to The Evil Dead—Raimi has a number of sequences he uses again, once he’s got a budget—it’s more significant for its differences. First, it’s a monster movie. While gory, it has more in common with an old Universal horror picture than it read more
They Only Kill Their Masters (1972, James Goldstone)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 24, 2011
I don’t know if I can think of a more mild mystery than They Only Kill Their Masters. It’s a solid vehicle for James Garner, giving him a lot of leading man stuff to do and a fair amount of internal conflict. But it’s so slight, so genial, it doesn’t leave much of an impress read more
Man Made Monster (1941, George Waggner)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 21, 2011
Man Made Monster, at least for the first fifteen minutes (of an hour), gives Lon Chaney Jr. one of his best roles. He gets to be the affable guy his other performances from the forties often hint he’s capable of being, but never gets to be. Not surprisingly, Monster takes that aspect of his c read more
Night of the Living Dead (1968, George A. Romero)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 19, 2011
What a lame ending. If it weren’t for the sufficiently uncanny end credits, I’d finish Night of the Living Dead thinking it was supposed to be a comedy. Actually, if it weren’t for that lame ending, I’d be starting this response much differently. Night of the Living Dead has one of the most read more
Hustle (1975, Robert Aldrich)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 10, 2011
Leonard Maltin calls Hustle pretentious. I think he’s referring to the spotlights Aldrich shines in people’s faces for close-ups. I think Maltin’s wrong about those shots and their pretense. Aldrich isn’t being pretentious, he’s just totally incompetent when it comes t read more
Amblin’ (1968, Steven Spielberg)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 6, 2011
Amblin’ might have more charm if I cared about hippies. The film should be called, The Adventures of Two Hitchhiking Hippies. Or one and a half hippies. I’m not even sure they’re supposed to be hippies, maybe just kind of hippies. There’s no dialogue in the film (oddly, it&# read more
Mystery of the 13th Guest (1943, William Beaudine)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 29, 2010
About two minutes after I finished watching Mystery of the 13th Guest, I realized no one ever solves the titular mystery. There’s a mysterious thirteenth guest in the first scene; the guest is absent and his or her identity is never revealed. Tim Ryan’s police lieutenant is supposed to read more
Blind Fury (1989, Phillip Noyce)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 27, 2010
I’ve been meaning to see Blind Fury again for twenty-one years or so. For a while, I assumed it would be pretty good (not entirely trusting my opinion at age ten) because Phillip Noyce directed it. Unfortunately, Noyce directs it with all the enthusiasm of a cologne commercial. It’s not read more
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984, W.D. Richter)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 17, 2010
Buckaroo Banzai‘s greatest contribution to cinema–well, if it didn’t get Peter Weller the Robocop role at least–is as a warning against trying to adapt authors like Thomas Pynchon to motion pictures. Banzai goes out of its way–the Pynchon references are well-known, to read more
Phantasm II (1988, Don Coscarelli)
The Stop Button Posted by on Nov 29, 2010
The first Phantasm wasn’t just an exercise in inventive low budget filmmaking, it dealt with the cultural fear of cemeteries. The second film has no such allusions. In fact, it’s just an example of bad low budget filmmaking. Clearly–and one can just google for more informationR read more
Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday (1939, Walter Forde)
The Stop Button Posted by on Nov 26, 2010
Gordon Harker was fifty-five when Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday came out. It’s very strange to see a film from this period with someone his age the lead in a comedic mystery. I’ve never seen him in anything and I can’t remember seeing Alastair Sim in anything but I know Sim’ read more
A Shriek in the Night (1933, Albert Ray)
The Stop Button Posted by on Nov 22, 2010
For the first twenty minutes or so–it runs just over an hour–A Shriek in the Night seems like it might be a decent, b mystery. Ginger Rogers is appealing as the reporter undercover as a murder victim’s secretary and Purnell Pratt is great as the police inspector on the case. Unfor read more
Revolt of the Zombies (1936, Victor Halperin)
The Stop Button Posted by on Nov 19, 2010
What an unmitigated disaster. It takes a lot for me to open with such a statement–well, maybe not, but certainly for a film I finished watching, even if it only does run sixty-two minutes. But Revolt of the Zombies might be one of the worst things ever and really shouldn’t be. Okay, wor read more
The Trollenberg Terror (1958, Quentin Lawrence)
The Stop Button Posted by on Nov 17, 2010
The importance of the director, in cinema, used to be a topic of discussion for me. It hasn’t been lately, because it’s hard to find good examples of well-scripted, well-acted, but terribly directed motion pictures. Thank goodness for The Trollenberg Terror and Quentin Lawrence. Lawrenc read more
The Speckled Band (1931, Jack Raymond)
The Stop Button Posted by on Nov 8, 2010
I think The Speckled Band is a period piece but maybe not. There aren’t any exterior establishing shots in London, so no automobiles. It’s a question because the Sherlock Holmes in this film isn’t some recluse… he’s got an office and three secretaries. The film has a v read more
Before Midnight (1933, Lambert Hillyer)
The Stop Button Posted by on Nov 5, 2010
Ralph Bellamy gets top billing here, but he doesn’t deserve it. I’m always stunned when, with a reasonably early feature motion picture like Before Midnight, the filmmakers are clearly exhausted with the genre. Midnight‘s a big house mystery (enclosed setting, certain number of su read more