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.
Tumbleweeds (1999, Gavin O’Connor)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 14, 2018
Despite excellent lead performances, Tumbleweeds is almost entirely inert–dramatically speaking. Janet McTeer is a thirtysomething single mom with bad taste in men who drags tween daughter Kimberly J. Brown all around the country after her latest romance goes bad. The romances never go too bad beca read more
It’s an Adventure, Charlie Brown (1983, Sam Jaimes, Phil Roman, and Bill Melendez)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 13, 2018
Despite being an anthology of eight different stories, It’s an Adventure, Charlie Brown does not have many adventures. Well, not in the adventurous sense. They’re still good, they’re just not… adventures. The special runs forty-seven minutes, with the eight stories having differing lengths. read more
What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? (1983, Bill Melendez)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 13, 2018
What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? is exceedingly intense. It doesn’t start intense, though it does start a little different. There’s this gradual shot–with Judy Munsen’s lovely score accompanying–moving through all the toys in Charlie Brown’s house before it gets to his bookshelf. read more
Is This Goodbye, Charlie Brown? (1983, Phil Roman)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 11, 2018
Is This Goodbye, Charlie Brown? opens with this gag of Linus and Snoopy fighting over Linus’s blanket. It doesn’t relate to the special’s story and has a completely different tone–and an almost cruel Linus (Jeremy Schoenberg)–but it does echo later on a little. Goodbye is about Linus read more
A Charlie Brown Celebration (1982, Bill Melendez)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 10, 2018
A Charlie Brown Celebration opens with Charles M. Schulz introducing the special–which is twice as long as a regular special–and explaining he and director Bill Melendez had a little bit different of an idea for this one. It’s going to be a series of vignettes (though Schulz doesn’t read more
It’s Magic, Charlie Brown (1981, Phil Roman)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 9, 2018
It’s Magic, Charlie Brown is the dramatically inert tale of Charlie Brown (Michael Mandy) turning invisible. It takes a while for him to turn invisible, with the first half or so of the special spent on a magic show. Magic opens with Charlie Brown demanding Snoopy go to the library to better himsel read more
Lawyer Man (1932, William Dieterle)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 8, 2018
Lawyer Man is a tad too streamlined. It runs around seventy minutes, charting neighborhood attorney–meaning he works with ethnic types and not blue bloods–William Powell’s rise and fall from grace. At the end, he says something about the events taking place over two years, which the film accomplish read more
The Descent (2005, Neil Marshall)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 7, 2018
I want to say nice things about The Descent. Or, more… I wish I could say nice things about The Descent. There are some nice things to say about it–the production values are strong, Marshall’s composition is decent, Sam McCurdy’s photography is good. It’s rarely boring–though it does drag read more
Someday You’ll Find Her, Charlie Brown (1981, Phil Roman)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 6, 2018
Someday You’ll Find Her, Charlie Brown is the cringe-inducing tale of Charlie Brown (Grant Wehr) and Linus (Rocky Reilly) stalking a girl Charlie Brown saw at a football game on TV. She was in a “honey shot,” which is already makes things cringe-y because these are eight year-old kids. Regardless read more
Life Is a Circus, Charlie Brown (1980, Phil Roman)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 5, 2018
Life is a Circus, Charlie Brown is about Snoopy joining the circus. Somewhat unintentionally. The circus comes to town, Snoopy investigates the racket, and eyes a fetching poodle. She’s in an act; her trainer grabs Snoopy and drafts him into it. After Snoopy proves funny (versus capable), the train read more
She’s a Good Skate, Charlie Brown (1980, Phil Roman)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 4, 2018
She’s a Good Skate, Charlie Brown is all about Peppermint Patty (Patricia Patts). Charlie Brown (Arrin Skelley) has a couple appearances, but it’s just for the brand. Skate is all Peppermint Patty, Snoopy, Marcie (Casey Carlson), and Woodstock. Patty’s training for an ice skating competition. read more
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966, Mike Nichols)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 3, 2018
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opens with this gentle, lovely music from Alex North. It’s night, it’s a university campus, a couple is walking silently as the credits roll; the music’s beautiful. Then the couple–Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton–get home. And pretty soon they start yelling read more
Venom (2018, Ruben Fleischer)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 2, 2018
For most of the movie, Venom’s greatest strength is its potential. It certainly seems like lead Tom Hardy can do anything but as things progress, it becomes more and more obvious the potential is an illusion. Director Fleischer just hasn’t done a big action sequence yet, so the movie hasn’t shown read more
Jour de fête (1949, Jacques Tati)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Dec 1, 2018
It’s about fifteen minutes before lead (and director) Jacques Tati appears in Jour de fête. The film opens with a travelling fair arriving at its destination and starting to set up. Paul Frankeur and Guy Decomble are the two main fair workers–actually they’re the only fair workers with anything read more
You're the Greatest, Charlie Brown (1979, Phil Roman)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 30, 2018
You’re the Greatest, Charlie Brown is the unlikely tale of Charlie Brown (Arrin Skelley) participating in the school’s track meet–doing the decathlon–and doing well. It opens with Peppermint Patty (Patricia Patts) trying to sucker one of her classmates into doing the decathlon; Charlie Brown read more
The Amazing Exploits of the Clutching Hand (1936, Albert Herman)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 29, 2018
While The Amazing Exploits of the Clutching Hand doesn’t start strong, the first chapter certainly isn’t any indication of how bad the serial is going to get over its fifteen chapters and five hour total run time. It’s never Amazing, there are rarely Exploits, but there is some Cl read more
The Amazing Exploits of the Clutching Hand (1936, Albert Herman), Chapter 15: The Lone Hand
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 28, 2018
I was expecting Clutching Hand to have a bad ending. It was inevitable. But I didn’t expect them to entirely ignore one of the major plot threads. If Clutching Hand has two plot threads, which it spends fourteen chapters suggesting are intricately connecting, The Lone Hand entirely ignores one of read more
The Amazing Exploits of the Clutching Hand (1936, Albert Herman), Chapter 14: The Silent Spectre
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 27, 2018
The Silent Spectre surprised me. I didn’t think Clutching Hand would be able to surprise me after they did the boat stuff–and there’s a lot more ship-based fisticuffs this chapter–but then it goes ahead and surprises me the very next chapter. I had no idea lead Jack Mulhall could be so exceptionall read more
Sleepwalkers (1992, Mick Garris)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 26, 2018
Sleepwalkers is a very peculiar motion picture. Director Garris never quite composes the shot right, even though he’s really close. Maybe he needs a wider frame or just to zoom out a bit. Instead it always looks like he’s shooting for the home video pan and scan. Rodney Charters’s photography read more
What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown! (1978, Bill Melendez and Phil Roman)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Nov 25, 2018
What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown! is not about Charlie Brown (Liam Martin) having a nightmare. He does get told, eventually, about a nightmare, but he’s only in the special at the beginning and the end. He gets the bright idea to play “sled dog” with Snoopy and have Snoopy lead him around like read more