Gordon Willis' New York: BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY

Another '80s gem. A movie so much about New York, cocaine, and yuppies, you'll think the neon was right there in the room with you. LIVE IT as Michael J. Fox lives it. Confront your own dickishness via the superficial milieu of cheap fusion restaurants; marvel at your lack of insightful introspection even as you walk the streets all night in search of crepuscular redemption.

Here Willis has perfected the art of the street corner, the street sign, and again--eternally, a trademark (money shot?)--the silhouetted couple. 

As with The Pick-Up Artist, Willis keeps the pic afloat; whatever mild interest it rouses stems from his consummate urban eye. Even though the film is laughably dated (albeit in a fun, "It's the '80s! Let's do cocaine!" kind of way), it takes itself much too seriously, in a faux Bret Easton Ellis style White Boy's Sorrow kind of way. Again, the pretty pictures ground its quarter-life crisis melodrama in some kind of recognizable reality. Yuppies come and OD; New York City survives.