Blue Day for Hollywood

By Dan Hagen

Even films I like still share, more or less, in the soullessness that pervades all Hollywood products these days.
Because that's what they are — products, and almost never what you might call "films." Why? In part because budget-stunned Hollywood screenplays now adhere to a formula more rigid than that wielded by the hacks who wrote the 10-cent pulp novels of the Depression era — reveal precisely half the protagonist's "dark secret" on page 47; then throw the cell phone in that prominent fountain right over there to demonstrate the heroine's newfound independence, individualism and elan to an audience that apparently prefers to see none of those qualities in its movies. 
Stylized kitsch can be fun. But kitsch-by-numbers? "Bah!," as Dr. Doom would put it.