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.
One Sunday Afternoon (1933, Stephen Roberts)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 3, 2008
One Sunday Afternoon suffers from some of the standard play-to-film problems. The scenes go on too long, especially in the first half, which only contains three real scenes. The opening, which is a lengthy, seemingly direct adaptation from the play, features Gary Cooper and Roscoe Karns talking to read more
Youth Runs Wild (1944, Mark Robson)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 2, 2008
It’s hard to know how Youth Runs Wild was supposed to turn out. RKO took it away from producer Val Lewton–the State Department was concerned the film would be detrimental to morale–but they were over his shoulder the entire time. The question is whether Youth Runs Wild was ever an read more
M (1931, Fritz Lang)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 1, 2008
I don’t think I’d ever realized M‘s technical importance. Lang creates quite a few filmmaking standards here, still in use today. Non-specific to genre, M features some brilliant off-screen dialogue work. It’s the earliest example (I’ve ever seen) of hearing a scene read more
Evelyn Prentice (1934, William K. Howard)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 29, 2008
Evelyn Prentice only runs eighty minutes, but it goes on forever. At seventeen minutes alone, it’s getting tiring. The big problem is the lack of thoughtful approach. It’s constantly revealing big twists, twists to shock the audience, but they just end up detracting from the film’ read more
The Wolf Man (1941, George Waggner)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 28, 2008
The Wolf Man‘s most lasting influence–beyond the advantages of using Larry Talbot as a synonym (Pynchon did it in Vineland) and the endlessly suffering protagonist–has to be the music. I noticed parts both John Williams (for The Empire Strikes Back) and Danny Elfman (for Batman Re read more
The Thing from Another World (1951, Christian Nyby)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 27, 2008
The Thing from Another World is a singular motion picture. It’s a combination of Howard Hawks’s fast-paced, overlapping dialogue and 1950s science fiction. It might even be the first of the 1950s sci-fi genre, the one setting the standard. There is a lot of supposition about the directo read more
Stanley and Livingstone (1939, Henry King)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 26, 2008
There are some beautiful sequences in Stanley and Livingstone, unfortunately, they’re mostly the second unit work from Africa. These sequences–the endless line of men trekking across great expanses–reveal the landscape and wild life of the continent with fervor. Later on, theyR read more
Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970, Joseph Sargent)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 25, 2008
Colossus is a pre-disaster movie, in the Irwin Allen sense. It has a lot in common with films like The Andromeda Strain and The Satan Bug. The problem is established and then the film’s story is an attempt to resolve it. It’s a little less character-oriented than the Allen disaster form read more
Back to the Future (1985, Robert Zemeckis) (2)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 22, 2008
Back to the Future has become a detached experience. It isn’t really dated, it’s just hard to interact with the film in the same way one could when its content was more contemporary (in seven years, it’ll be like watching Michael J. Fox as the parent and Crispin Glover as the gran read more
The Terminator (1984, James Cameron)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 12, 2008
I remember The Terminator being a lot better. Even as it started–I think during the first chase sequence (Michael Biehn in the department store)–I thought about the great highway chase sequence at the end. Then, as things went sour during, I kept waiting for that sequence, sure it would read more
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964, Honda Ishirô)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 7, 2008
Maybe half of Ghidorah is interesting. Or has the potential to be interesting. After the giant monster-heavy opening credits (stills of Godzilla and Rodan in battle), that aspect disappears for a while. Instead, Ghidorah is a strange mix of reporter and political intrigue movies. Hoshi Yuriko is a read more
Teachers (1984, Arthur Hiller)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 1, 2008
It must have been Bette Midler’s former manager, Aaron Russo (Teachers‘s producer), who somehow confused Arthur Hiller as the creative force behind The Hospital. Teachers is very much like The Hospital, but in its stoic protagonist, the stoic protagonist’s ultimate choice in the e read more
Million Dollar Legs (1932, Edward F. Cline)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jul 31, 2008
Million Dollar Legs is, production-wise, about a year early. It came out in 1932. A year later, another comedy about a goofy European nation, also from Paramount (from the same producer), came out. Duck Soup was a bomb at the time and appreciated later. Million Dollar Legs has a great reputation read more
Conan the Barbarian (1982, John Milius)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jul 28, 2008
John Milius takes Conan the Barbarian very seriously. The occasional use of slow motion and the endlessness of Basil Poledouris’s cheesy score signal Milius’s dedication. So do the long and frequent sequences of shirtless Arnold Schwarzenegger playing with big swords. At the beginning o read more
Mothra (1961, Honda Ishirô)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jul 15, 2008
Mothra is a strange mix of Japanese monster movie, 1950s Hollywood sci-fi and Disney. The last ingredient only becomes clear at the end of the movie, though it’s probably present throughout (as Mothra returns home with the two fairies, it’s clear Mothra would have made a fine animated f read more
Prince of Darkness (1987, John Carpenter)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jul 11, 2008
I’d forgotten Prince of Darkness‘s more fanciful notions–Jesus the space alien, still sent to Earth to save us from the Devil, but this time, the Devil’s kind of a space alien too (or not)–and its less creative ones (the Devil uses projectile vomit to posses people). I read more
American Graffiti (1973, George Lucas)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jul 4, 2008
I don’t know where to start. The most flippant place to start–the most colloquial–is with George Lucas… specifically, what happened to the George Lucas who made American Graffiti. But it’s not just Lucas. Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck didn’t go on to write anythi read more
Dead of Winter (1987, Arthur Penn)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jun 25, 2008
Loath as I am to be glib about a director like Arthur Penn, Dead of Winter comes off like a TNT Original Movie. Penn proves himself–with the exception of maybe one scene and even then it’s awkward because it’s Arthur Penn using Steadicam–almost completely inept at directing read more
About
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jun 20, 2008
Hello, and welcome, to the Stop Button “About” page. I’m Andrew Wickliffe and I’ve been blogging here so long the site can get a driving permit. I write about movies, comics, and television. On rare occasion, I write longer pieces in hopes of driving traffic to the older pie read more
The Morning After (1986, Sidney Lumet)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jun 19, 2008
The Morning After is an awkward combination of thriller and adult drama. As a thriller, with Paul Chihara’s enthusiastic and bombastic score, it’s frequently annoying. Jane Fonda can scrub a crime scene of every thread of evidence, but the simple things–like dropping a succeeding read more