SPOILER ALERT

A movie blog by Staten Island Advance's Todd Hill

Focus FeaturesJames Franco and Sean Penn, from left, star as Scott Smith and Harvey Milk, respectively, in the new Gus Van Sant film "Milk."

We've read now several reviews of the new Gus Van Sant film "Milk," about 1970s gay-rights pioneer Harvey Milk, and found all of them positively glowing except for one --- ours. Although AWE doesn't publish this week until Friday because of Thanksgiving, all of this week's movies opened today to allow for the holiday, so we'll mention here that we gave the movie two and a half stars --- not a scathing review by any means, but certainly not glowing.

IFC FilmsBenicio Del Toro stars as the Argentinian guerrilla leader Che Guevara in the Steven Soderbergh film "Che."

We saw a movie Friday morning, "Four Christmases," and we rejoiced, for it was only 89 minutes long. Never mind the fact that we're not anywhere close to being in the holiday mindset just yet; we were just joyful because the movie was short.

Maybe you'll understand this when we mention the movie we saw the day before that --- "Australia," clocking in at 165 minutes. Then there was the film we caught the day before "Australia" --- "Che," all 262 minutes of that one.

Sony PicturesDaniel Craig and Olga Kurylenko star in "Quantum of Solace," the 22nd James Bond film.

Just to start by referring to our last blog entry, we caught the film "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948) over the weekend. The movie and its screenplay are fully as dopey as we expected. This isn't material that's exactly fresh to the audiences of today. But Abbott & Costello --- especially Lou Costello, of course --- were two truly funny gents. Comic geniuses, they were, for their time.

"Quantum of Solace," the 22nd film in the James Bond franchise, of course owned the box office this weekend with a take of $70.4 million. Notably, this was $30 million more than the last Bond film, 2006's "Casino Royale," managed in its opening weekend.

Thestudiotour.comFrom left, Bud Abbott, Lon Chaney Jr. and Lou Costello appear in a promo photo for their 1948 film "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein."

STATEN ISLAND, NY -- For us in the film journalism biz, the holiday movie season has begun in earnest, with every day now filled with screenings (of films that all seem to drag well over two hours), multiple interviews, and never enough time to write it all up. But still, we find time to blog, because that's just how dedicated we are.

Speaking of time, we've been perusing lately the new David Thomson book "Have You Seen . . . ?": A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films," a tome that's exactly what it sounds like. Lists like this are always, you know, inevitably subjective, but Thomson's compendium is both complete, encompassing all eras of film from all over the world, and learned. Thomson not only knows his subject, but he's a good writer as well.

Nitrolicious.comFilmmakers Francis Ford Coppola and his daughter Sofia Coppola appear in an ad for Louis Vuitton.

Over the past 10 years of interviewing movie stars, film directors, screenwriters, producers and what-not, we've learned that in show business, as in other businesses, the apple often does not fall from the tree. Just as there are families where one generation after another works in law enforcement, farming or tax litigation, so too are there generations of film folk.

We had a chat today with Amy Redford, the daughter of actor/director Robert Redford, who's directed a new indie film called "The Guitar," which as it happens is our best reviewed movie of this week. You can find our review of the film in this week's AWE, while our interview with Amy will appear next week.

Sony Pictures ClassicsElsa Zylberstein and Kristin Scott Thomas, from left, star in the French drama "I've Loved You So Long," now playing in Manhattan.

Today we introduce a new feature that we'd like to make a regular Friday routine, although we know that will never happen. Look for it periodically, is all we can safely say. Following is a list of current films we recommend seeing for various reasons. They may not all be four-star movies, but there's something noteworthy about each of them.

We've checked, and every movie listed below is playing in Manhattan as of this weekend. Where noted they are also playing on Staten Island, but honestly, if you're waiting for the best titles to make it to this borough before seeing them you'll be waiting forever. Literally. These are movies we would make a trip into the city to see (and in fact did).

Britannica OnlineIf you must watch "The Pink Panther," skip the 2006 remake starring Steve Martin and track down the original films with Peter Sellers, seen here playing Inspector Closeau in 1975's "Return of the Pink Panther."

Perhaps we shouldn't admit to this, but we often find ourselves reviewing some obscure, little, mega-indie film and wondering who on Staten Island, even if they happen to read our review and are intrigued, is going to make the effort to go into Manhattan --- the only place the film is playing and likely to ever play in most cases --- and see it on the big screen.

We wonder because in many cases even we didn't, opting to have the film overnighted to us on DVD. Accordingly, we try to limit our reviews of such titles to indies that are at least halfway decent to our mind, or otherwise notable.

PhotobucketActor Terrence Howard is no longer attached to the role of James Rhodes for the next "Iron Man" film.

Before we get to what we came here to talk about today, we want to mention that we screened the new James Bond film "Quantum of Solace" yesterday. The movie, which opens Nov. 14, rocks, although our appreciation of the movie is not without reservations.

We're sitting down for a chat with the new Bond girl, Olga Kurylenko, tomorrow, and will be speaking with Daniel Craig in a week or two, so we'll have more to say about this picture in coming weeks, but we'll say this for now --- Craig is probably the best Bond since Sean Connery, in our humble opinion.