The Hollywoodland Revue

The middle of May brings one of the more eclectic release weekends of the year, with Hollywood offering audiences everything from Guy Ritchie-style action mayhem and supernatural horror to psychologically driven revenge thrillers and nostalgic franchise revivals. Several of the weekend’s films arrive carrying strong critical buzz from festival screenings, while others appear aimed squarely at popcorn audiences looking for escapist entertainment as the summer movie season begins accelerating toward blockbuster territory. Whether viewers are seeking violent action, cerebral horror, prestige drama, or pure spectacle, theaters are offering a surprisingly varied lineup this weekend.

While there are many forgotten pioneers of early American theater and motion pictures, few are remembered with the recognition they deserve. Beatrice DeMille managed to link the nineteenth century theater world with the developing motion-picture industry in America. DeMille was the mother of two influential filmmakers, but she was also a playwright and theatrical manager, and a cultural force in her own right.

Before Batman became a television sensation, before Tim Burton restored his gothic grandeur, and long before the character became one of the most profitable properties in modern film history, he first stepped onto the screen in a wartime Columbia serial. Released in 1943, Batman was a 15-chapter cliffhanger starring Lewis Wilson as Batman and Bruce Wayne, with Douglas Croft as Robin and Dick Grayson. It was cheaply made, briskly paced, politically charged, and at times startlingly crude by modern standards, yet it remains historically indispensable: this was the first live-action appearance of Batman, Robin, Alfred, and several elements that would help shape the character’s screen mythology.

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle died in his sleep early on June 29, 1933, in a suite at the Park Central Hotel in New York. Once America’s favorite movie comedian, he was just forty-six. Newspaper accounts say his wife, former actress Addie McPhail, awoke around 2:45 a.m. and found him groaning. When she roused him, he didn’t respond. Doctors were summoned, but it was soon clear that Arbuckle had died of heart failure. Just hours before, he had been joyously celebrating “the happiest day of my life”—his anniversary.

When so many movies are defined by explosions, sneers, and resurrecting decades-old franchises, Remarkably Bright Creatures dares to be something we see far too rarely these days: a heartfelt film unafraid to embrace feeling, compassion, and gentle human interaction. Directed by Olivia Newman and based on Shelby Van Pelt’s bestselling novel of the same name, Remarkably Bright Creatures had all the ingredients to easily turn maudlin or gimmicky. Particularly because its main storyline centers around the unlikely friendship between a curmudgeonly widow and a giant Pacific octopus. Instead, Remarkably Bright Creatures manages to become one of the most emotionally rewarding films of the year, buoyed by a transcendent performance by Sally Field and a truly compassionate ensemble that fully understands what’s at stake with this material’s balance of sadness, comedy, and optimism.

There are figures in cultural history who never set foot in Hollywood, yet whose presence lingers there all the same—felt not in geography, but in myth. Among them stands Rupert Brooke, the English poet whose brief, luminous life and untimely death helped define an ideal that Hollywood would later elevate, replicate, and immortalize: the beautiful youth, touched by promise, claimed too soon.

Vladislav Kozlov’s Silent Life: The Rudolph Valentino Centennial Final Cut is not your typical Valentino biopic, nor does it aim to be one. Although it does purport to tell the real story of Rudolph Valentino, the film is much more personal than that. Dubbed hypnotic by some viewers, Silent Life plays less like a straightforward account of Valentino’s life than a fever dream recalling the legacy of cinema’s first movie sex symbol. With no real interest in historical timelines, the film drifts through the spiritual remnants of a star whose hold on our collective imagination has proven somewhat timeless. Making its rounds through the festival circuit, and appearing at the Cannes Marché du Film, during May 12-20, 2026, Silent Life stakes its claim as part-history lesson, part-meditation.

Hollywood enters the second weekend of May with one of the year’s more eclectic lineups, offering audiences everything from brutal video-game combat and prestige literary drama to fashion-world nostalgia and giant singing sheep. The current theatrical landscape continues to reflect the fractured modern audience: franchise fans still dominate the box office, but studios are increasingly relying on counterprogramming—adult dramas, concert films, and quirky specialty pictures—to lure viewers away from streaming and back into theaters. Whether moviegoers want spectacle, comfort, sentiment, horror, or escapism, this weekend’s releases provide an unusually broad range of choices.

Ted Turner's passing marks the end of one of the most revolutionary and impactful lives in modern media. Mercurial, brash, visionary, divisive and frustratingly undefinable at times, Turner revolutionized television news, redefined cable television, disrupted media ownership models, and cultivated a public image so wild that, for a time, he became as famous as the outlets he established. Launching CNN in 1980, Turner didn't just alter how we consume news, he reshaped how we witness history unfold.

Hollywood in the 1930s was built as much on illusion as it was on labor, and nowhere was that more evident than in the world of child actors. For every recognizable face who carried a scene, there were others — smaller, quieter presences — who stood just outside the frame, ready to step in when needed. Among them was Alan Howard Hirst, a boy whose brief life intersected with one of Hollywood’s most beloved comedy traditions and whose story, though largely forgotten, remains etched into the margins of film history.

In an era when the meaning of “home” is often filtered through screens and carefully composed images, the story of Benji Le—known to a growing audience as benjiplant—and his partner, Chris Middendorf, stands apart for its quiet authenticity, its emotional candor, and, ultimately, its perseverance. Their journey, from college freshmen to creative partners documenting a shared life in Los Angeles, unfolds not as spectacle but as something more intimate: a living record of how two people build, lose, and begin again.

At 6439 Hollywood Boulevard, just steps from the long-vanished Warner Hollywood Theatre, stands a relic from a time when the boulevard was not yet defined by souvenir stands and passing crowds, but by elegant storefronts, glowing marquees, and a civic-minded sense that even the most ordinary object could be rendered with beauty and purpose. The William Stromberg Clock, installed around 1928, is one of the last surviving emblems of that era—a stately street clock that has silently observed Hollywood’s cycles of glamour, decline, and reinvention for almost a century.