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.
My Criterion Closet Wish List
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Sep 6, 2023
I really enjoy watching the Criterion Closet Picks videos where various actors and filmmakers get to choose movies to take home with them. Their selections reveal interesting details about their tastes and experience with film, although they do tend to favor certain genres, decades, and directors, p read more
Gaslight Noir on the Criterion Channel
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Sep 1, 2023
While many of the Criterion Channel's featured categories highlight newer or international films, the lineup for September 2023 also includes one of my favorite classic sub-genres, "Gaslight Noir." If you love films like Gaslight (whether the 1940 or 1944 version), this is a collection sure to send read more
Classic Films in Focus: LADIES IN RETIREMENT (1941)
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Aug 29, 2023
If Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) were a tragic drama instead of a screwball comedy, it might play out something like Ladies in Retirement (1941), in which a desperate young woman goes to extreme measures to protect her psychologically complicated sisters. We talk about insanity and mental health very read more
Classic Films in Focus: THE MAD MISS MANTON (1938)
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Jul 19, 2023
Although it's not on the same level as their later collaboration, The Lady Eve (1941), The Mad Miss Manton is still an amusing outing for stars Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. It's a goofy mix of romantic comedy and murder mystery, with Stanwyck leading a pack of socialite sleuths and Fonda fallin read more
A Vivien Leigh Tribute in Stratford-Upon-Avon
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Jul 10, 2023
As I was walking from the Royal Shakespeare Company to Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-Upon-Avon, I came across this sweet little tribute to legendary actress Vivien Leigh. Best remembered today for Oscar winning film roles as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in read more
Wanting More: The Open Ending of THE DAMNED DON'T CRY (1950)
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on May 23, 2023
WARNING! This post contains major spoilers for THE DAMNED DON'T CRY and other classic noir films. Proceed at your own risk. When I showed The Damned Don't Cry (1950) to my lifetime learners as the final film of our Joan Crawford series, they were especially struck by the open ending of the story, wh read more
Big Stars on the Small Screen: THE MUPPET SHOW
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on May 15, 2023
This post is part of the CMBA Spring Blogathon - Big Stars on the Small Screen: In Support of National Classic Movie Day. Check out all of the participating blogs and posts by visiting the Classic Movie Blog Association's post about the blogathon!Big Stars on the Small Screen: Classic Movie Guest St read more
Classic Films in Focus: WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER? (1957)
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Mar 22, 2023
The 1950s proved a challenging time in the movie industry as television became a full-fledged competitor for audience attention, and Frank Tashlin confronts the issue with satiric glee in his 1957 comedy, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, which Tashlin wrote, directed, and produced with only the most read more
Time to Quit Twitter
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Feb 20, 2023
It's time to quit Twitter.I joined Twitter over a decade ago to connect with classic movie fans, writers, fellow LEGO enthusiasts, and other people who shared some of my eclectic interests. It was, for many years, a satisfying experience that introduced me to films, books, and people I would not oth read more
Classic Films in Focus: THE QUEEN OF SPADES (1949)
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Feb 20, 2023
Once considered lost, The Queen of Spades (1949) is an example of buried cinematic treasure that was luckily rediscovered so that we can enjoy it again today, an ironic twist since it's a tale about the fickle turns of Fortune's wheel. The plot comes from a short story of the same name by Alexander read more
Classic Films in Focus: THE SUSPECT (1944)
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Feb 9, 2023
Warning: This review contains spoilers for The Suspect (1944). Director Robert Siodmak weaves Victorian sensibility with noir energy in the justifiable homicide story of The Suspect (1944), which sees a mild-mannered Charles Laughton driven to murder by his extremely disagreeable wife. It's an unusu read more
Classic Films in Focus: DEAD OF NIGHT (1945)
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Feb 2, 2023
Long before The Twilight Zone came the 1945 British anthology film, Dead of Night, which weaves together a collection of eerie tales within a framework that gathers a small group of people in an English country house. While it's not exactly a horror movie, it does offer plenty of weird and even dist read more
Classic Films in Focus: THEODORA GOES WILD (1936)
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Jan 25, 2023
The truly delightful Theodora Goes Wild (1936) is an underappreciated gem of the screwball genre, one that ought to be much better known today among fans of classic romantic comedy. Its stars, Irene Dunne and Melvyn Douglas, are A-listers performing at their comedic best in this outing, although dir read more
2022 Movie Log in Review
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Jan 1, 2023
Happy New Year! Here's my annual post listing every movie I watched in the previous year. Getting the Criterion Channel rather late in 2022 helped me add more new-to-me classics to my list - it's far and away my favorite streaming service at the moment, and I plan to continue using it in 2023. As al read more
Classic Films in Focus: MURDER, HE SAYS (1945)
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Dec 17, 2022
Fred MacMurray and Marjorie Main most famously appear together in the 1947 comedy classic, The Egg and I, but Murder, He Says (1945) offers an earlier pairing that pits the two against one another as hapless city slicker and unscrupulous backwoods crook. This comic mystery from director George Marsh read more
Classic Films in Focus: YOU NEVER CAN TELL (1951)
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Dec 15, 2022
I've seen a lot of unusual classic movies, but You Never Can Tell (1951) might be in a class all by itself when it comes to animal themed reincarnation private detective mystery comedies. Directed by film writer Lou Breslow, this offbeat picture stars Dick Powell as a murdered German Shepherd who co read more
Classic Films in Focus: THE DIVORCE OF LADY X (1938)
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Nov 17, 2022
While not on par with the greatest of the screwball comedies, The Divorce of Lady X (1938) delivers a thoroughly engaging British take on the genre with notable performances from two iconic stars. Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon lead a fairly small cast in this second adaptation of Gilbert Wakefie read more
Classic Films in Focus: OUT OF THE FOG (1941)
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Nov 7, 2022
Director Anatole Litvak's Out of the Fog (1941) delivers on the promised atmosphere, with fog heavy piers and dark alleys providing a moody setting for this story of Brooklyn's waterfront working class, but the tone veers away from true noir thanks to the sympathetic and often very funny characters read more
Classic Films in Focus: THE DARK CORNER (1946)
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Nov 4, 2022
Henry Hathaway directed the very solid Fox noir, The Dark Corner (1946), which features genre standouts like Mark Stevens, William Bendix, and Clifton Webb, but most viewers will be drawn to the picture for Lucille Ball, an actress not normally known for noir roles but perfectly at home as the loyal read more
LEGO Tribute to NOSFERATU (1922)
Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on Oct 31, 2022
Happy Halloween! This year I decided to celebrate spooky season with a LEGO tribute to one of the greatest horror movies ever made, Nosferatu (1922). Max Schreck created an iconic character as the creepy, plague carrying Count Orlok, the film's replacement for Count Dracula (because they couldn't ge read more