Hanley On Film

10/01/2026

Proposing a “Wong Kar-wai Vibes” Pop-Up Night featuring copious amounts of cha chaan teng street noodles, long drags on ci******es, short furtive glances of longing, a solitary lamp bulb about to go out, and your parents’ pop vinyl collection on repeat.

Oh, and ABSOLUTELY NO TOUCHING, save light tactile grazing while moving through comically narrow passageways in the rain.
The night ends with you quietly whispering your deepest desires into inanimate objects at the ends of the earth.

Who’s in?
New Episodes of Blindspotting: A Film Discovery Podcast Are Dropping Soon!

09/30/2026

THE WEIGHT is a hand-crafted indie love letter to the kind of small-batch genre films your Grandfather would blindly buy tickets for with you at the local Saturday matinee in the early 80's...and I'm FU***NG HERE for that.

A genuinely seat-gripping thriller out of Sundance Film Festival with lovely performances from its small-batch cast, it's clear that debut filmmaker Padraic McKinley understands that tension and atmosphere needn't rely on a budget- but are built one agonizing and innovative moment at a time.

This is the kind of lean, sweaty, wonderfully old-fashioned filmmaking that knows EXACTLY what kind of movie it wants to be- and how rare it is in today's zeitgeist. Great fun- give it some love.

09/27/2026

PRIMETIME is a marvelously acted and refreshingly absurd (particularly in the much stronger first act) study of the exploitative ecosystem of American reality television that works best when it occasionally goes for the jugular...unfortunately, like THE WOLF OF WALL STREET before it, it frustratingly steps away from its most savage- and deserved- indictments in service of becoming mesmerized by the bombastic performance of its subject.

The sleazy promise of its initial salvo gets lost along the way- but make no mistake, these performances are devastatingly brilliant (I'm especially looking at you, Merritt Wever). If you wish to get the proper full-throated indictment of Hansen, our culture, and OURSELVES, I highly recommend the far superior documentary PREDATORS from 2025 directed by David Osit, which refuses to let Hansen- and US- off the hook for our own predatory impulses.

*** out of *****

07/27/2026

Listening to the MARVELOUS new Roman Mars series, "The History of the World in 100 Objects". However, this week’s episode, on the cultural history of the nunchaku, gets into something far more dark and consequential: the heartbreaking legacy of anti-Asian racism Bruce Lee had to navigate simply to gain legitimacy for himself-and for martial arts-in Hollywood.

So consider this my yearly reminder to say F**K ALL THE WAY OFF to serial plagiarist Quentin Tarantino and especially to his later, increasingly reactionary-revisionist canon fantasies in which we are expected to believe (and admire) that an aging Brad Pitt gets to beat, humiliate, and lecture Bruce Lee in his prime.

From the out-of-the-gate rip off of Ringo Lam’s CITY ON FIRE to “White Lady" SNOWBLOOD and beyond, QT’s relationship with the cultures and people of color he fetishizes has ALWAYS followed a rather convenient cycle: fetishization to appropriation to disparagement...invariably in service of elevating his white protagonists.

And since we’re talking Bruce Lee, here’s your fun final Hollywood history fact: Lee was famously passed over for the lead in KUNG FU, which instead went to David Carradine- who would go on to alter his eyelids with tape in perhaps the most egregious use of "yellow-face" since Mickey Rooney?

So here’s to Bruce Lee: an artist who had to fight like hell for legitimacy in an industry perfectly happy to consume and capitalize off of Asian culture while simultaneously marginalizing its people.

Give the episode a listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/100-objects-10-nunchaku/id394775318?i=1000775828115

And to Quentin: yeah, take SEVERAL fu***ng seats.

06/29/2026

Boulder! Are YOU a Boots Riley Kind of Cinephile?

Because we are a Boots Riley Kind of Arts Center… and we’d love you to join us on Wednesday, July 1st at 7 PM for a special screening of the brilliantly audacious I LOVE BOOSTERS with special guest model maker and miniaturist effects artist Matt Haslam, whose handcrafted artistic designs (recently championed by Guillermo del Toro himself) helped bring the film’s revolutionary world of radical dialectical materialism to life.

Even MORE AWESOME- Matt will likewise be bringing some of the actual models and props from the film during his talk-back moderated by Bryan Bonner and Jack Hanley.

We are PROUD to screen and support Boots, Matt, and ALL fearless independent films and filmmakers!

TICKETS ARE GOING FAST- get on the bus and get your tickets to the film THEY DON'T want you to see…tix at thedairy.org

06/25/2026

Jaws is a film about a shark.

Jaws is a film about three men...who happen upon a shark.

Jaws is a film about competing ideals of masculinity under extraordinary pressure.

Jaws is a film about capitalism's institutional imperative to deny reality in the name of profit.

Jaws is a film about Vietnam- the shark representing an invisible, unwinnable war.

Jaws is a film about Cuba, stalked by an ever-present imperial predator called the United States.

Jaws is the first slasher film.

Jaws is a film about a shark...until it isn't.

EVERY great film has layers just waiting to be discovered.

This July, join film critic and scholar Jack Hanley for How to Watch a Movie: Part II, an eight-week journey into the hidden language of cinema. We'll move beyond plot, stars, and reviews to explore how films create meaning, why they endure, and how history, politics, psychology, aesthetics, and culture all converge on the screen.

Because once you learn how to watch a movie.....you'll never watch one the same way again.

Save your spot today- tickets at https://thedairy.org/htwam

06/19/2026

On this edition of the Filmic 5 via Hanley On Film we marvel at Olivia Rodrigo's Gen Z love of 90's lo-fi tech; we get a sneak peek of The Criterion Collection's new Kubrickian treat; we appreciate the blood-fountain films of Yoshihiro Nishimura via a marvelous essay by critic Michelle Kisner; we note that Jennifer Lopez made me "cinepheile cry" on the highway; and I share my obsession with a certain cinematic pencil.

Click here to read- and visit hanleyonfilm.com to sign up for our free newsletter highlighting the filmic superlatives of the week!

Your Weekly Film Superlatives By Critic and Film Scholar Jack Hanley I. Film Tech Nostalgia Making Me Happy This Week It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you are the Gen X parent of a Gen Z daughter, you have been gleefully exposed to two brilliant discoveries: the pop

05/06/2026

SICK / SNOW Day Movie Drop For our City of Lafayette FreeBlockbuster Art Project!

Some film donations in the name of three of my favorite cinephile co-conspirators today...

In honor of Zach Eastman, the delightfully witty ALL ABOUT EVE (Dir. Joseph Mankiewicz)

In honor of Scott Aigner, the magnificent E.T. ANNIVERSARY EDITION (Dir. Steven Spielberg)

and in honor of Bryan Bonner, the blu-ray re-release of THE NEVERENDING STORY (Dir. Wolfgang Petersen)

Enjoy! And remember-we have an amazing little art project via the , whose mission is to enrich our local community cultures by providing FREE cinema to as many people in the community as possible.

I hope you visit this week to enjoy (look directly in front of Ghost Box Pizza on Public) and look for more titles to come next week!

LONG LIVE CINEMA! www.freeblockbuster.org