Looking for something squarish to stuff in that stocking hung on the chimney with care? Faithful readers may recall the praise slathered hereabouts (http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/51/dreamboat.htm) on The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson, reporter Robert Hofler’s lively and richly documented exposé of how things worked in Hollywood’s “Golden Age”, especially in agent Henry Willson’s clandestine gay society ... read more »

Not since Amélie stuck raspberries on all ten fingers has such whimsy wafted off the screen, though Michel Gondry’s hero in the wistful yet delightfully goofy The Science of Sleep proves kinder and gentler than Jeunet’s exhaustingly aggressive gamine. Though set in a realistic Paris (while occasionally morphing into a scissors-and-paste fantasy metropolis), the fanciful ... read more »

Hollywoodland is hardly the first film to feature a brace of matinee idols who smirk with all the confidence of the well-paid (consult most buddy movies starting with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for past prototypes. Or ask grandpa about Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy in Test Pilot). The difference in today’s film is ... read more »

“Art is one of the consolation prizes we receive for having lived in a difficult and sometimes chaotic world . . .This isn’t to say that art has to be comforting; obviously, it can be deeply disturbing”. Don DeLillo If we believe novelist DeLillo, then the September 11 massacre of innocents, with its visceral shock ... read more »

In the great generic title tradition of Woman In the Window, Girl On the Bridge and Female On the Beach comes M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady In the Water, though she’s not so much a lady as an errant freshwater nymph, a blankly angelic if bedraggled innocent who maintains an underwater cave packed with magically healing ... read more »

While the other party-goers are busy hacking their way through the streamers, balloons, confetti and discarded champagne bottles, I’ll steal a moment away from the opening night festivities here at BLFJ Blog Plaza to post one to watch for: Beautifully shot on an abandoned and decaying oil tanker barely afloat in the warm turquoise waters ... read more »