Hanley On Film

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

03/15/2026

The Envelope Please...

In this special Oscars edition of Blindspotting, the Boys help you dominate your Academy Awards ballot with their annual predictions of who WILL win, who SHOULD win, and some of the ACTUAL BEST films and performances of 2025! DON'T MISS THIS ONE!

It's TIME! In their annual tradition, the Boys of Blindspotting: A Film Discovery Podcast make their final Academy Awards ballot predictions, offering their takes on who WILL, who SHOULD, and some ACTUAL BEST films and performances of the year.&nb...

02/14/2026

Ten Great Romantic Films To Watch This Weekend

Ten Great Romantic Films To Watch This Weekend

02/14/2026

Hanley On Film's 10 Great Romantic Films To Watch This Valentine's Day

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000) Dir. Wong Kar-wai

The one to rule them all. No notes.

02/14/2026

Hanley On Film's 10 Great Romantic Films To Watch This Valentine's Day

Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN (2001) Dir. Alfonso Cuarón

Sometimes, its not about the agápē but the Érōs- and at first glance, Alfonso Cuarón’s masterpiece mediation on lust and intimacy masquerades as a s*x comedy road movie- all bravado, hormones, and youthful recklessness.

But beneath the sweat and abandon lies one of the most quietly devastating romances of the twenty-first century...a love story not merely between its three protagonists, but in that fleeting sacred space between fleeting youth and the unbearable awareness of adulthood.

It is an unapologetic tribute to those rare and brief openings in time where we see each other CLEARLY before life and time pulls us apart. Romance, in Cuarón’s hands, is the lingering ache that remains after the road trip ends.

02/13/2026

Hanley On Film's 10 Great Romantic Films To Watch This Valentine's Day

PERFECT DAYS (2023) Dir. Wim Wenders

Who says romance requires two people? PERFECT DAYS explores the radical act of falling in love with the world, with your life, and with yourself. Instead of romance as pursuit or longing for another, Wim Wenders proposes a different kind of eroticism: intimacy with time, routine, and the fragile beauty of a ordinary life in which simple deliberate acts like cleaning, listening to music, or watching light move through trees operate like gestures of devotion.

But is it romantic? In EVERY sense of the word. It quietly reframes romance as a love affair with existence itself- a tender reminder that sometimes the single most radical act is choosing to fall in love with your own life- and everything that makes it up- one small ritual at a time.

02/13/2026

Hanley On Film's 10 Great Romantic Films To Watch This Valentine's Day

FALLEN LEAVES (2023) Dir. Aki Kaurismäki

Kaurismäki's latest (and sadly, perhaps last) is a deeply plaintive and poetic love letter to the human connection in an inhumane world that has no right being so damn charming and optimistic…beautiful and Chaplinesque in its unabashed love for humanity.

Of COURSE my favorite Finnish filmmaker frames his social-realist rom-com around the transformative power of cinema...of COURSE you knew EXACTLY what name the dog would have at the end...of COURSE I cried. You will too.

02/13/2026

Hanley On Film's 10 Great Romantic Films To Watch This Valentine's Day

CITY LIGHTS (1931) Dir. Charlie Chaplin

CITY LIGHTS unabashedly reframes romance as an act of radical humanism- where love quietly transcends the brutal realities of class and social division. Chaplin, ever the champion of the outsider, roots for human dignity above all else, INSISTING that tenderness and empathy belong to EVERYONE, regardless of status.

When the film’s final moment of realization- perhaps the most famous romantic single shot in cinematic history- happens, it lands like a revolution. Just two human beings finally "meeting" each other honestly for the first time, stripped of fantasy, class illusion, and performance.

The enduring power of Chaplin was always his profoundly humanist world-view...this is love as empathy, and the radical notion that dignity and simply being truly SEEN is far more intimate than being desired.

02/13/2026

Hanley On Film's 10 Great Romantic Films To Watch This Valentine's Day

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME (2017) Dir. Luca Guadagnino

Guadagnino's coming-of-age masterwork understands — like the Bard's star-crossed lovers before it — that you will NEVER feel the pangs of love, desire, or loss quite as viscerally and violently as you do when you are young- when every furtive glance somehow feels apocalyptic and world-changing.

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME reframes first love into a coming-of-age WOUND, capturing both the dizzy certainty that this feeling is singular, and magical, and eternal even as it is doomed- like all first loves- to slip away. And that final firelit ending? If ONLY I had a smoking Michael Stuhlbarg to turn to in 8th grade...