Ty's movie picks for Friday, Jan. 18

Wesley's at Sundance, I'll be there starting Tuesday. The DGA has cut a deal with the studios, and a favorable one. The Oscar folks are stonewalling the striking writers -- how's that for nerve? And riding atop the zeitgeist bubble for the next hot nanosecond is "Cloverfield," an epic monster movie that dares to be 75 minutes long. Not counting the end credits. Actually, I think the end credits are longer than the actual movie. Apparently, It took hundreds and hundreds of craftspeople to make "Cloverfield" look like it was shot entirely on a cheap digital video-cam held by a half-drunk idiot.

Wesley thinks "27 Dresses" is cute and that's about it. Seems to be a consensus opinion. Same for "Mad Money." "Honeydripper" is subpar John Sayles in my opinion, but others disagree. "Cassandra's Dream" is Woody Allen telling yet another London-based tale of crimes and misdemeanors, but it's actually a little better than "Match Point," and it has that rarity, a rich and moving performance by Colin Farrell.

The Brattle is showing Bergman's "Monika" all weekend -- Harriet Andersson can still steam your glasses and break your heart, 55 years on -- and on Sunday a whole bunch of us Boston area movie critics convene at the theater to honor Frank Langella, the winner of the Boston Society of Film Critics award for best actor of 2008. The film for which he won it, "Starting Out in the Evening," will screen, and Langella will be there. Take a look at this still of the actor in 1970's "The Twelve Chairs" -- the man was so beautiful you could cry.

Speaking of hotness re Andersson and Langella, the festival of racy pre-Code Hollywood movies at the Harvard Film Archive is must viewing for anyone who still thinks oldies were sexually neutered. They were, but only after Joseph Breen got done with them. The HFA will also host an appearance by Brandeis professor and classic Hollywood scholar Tom Doherty, author of the brand-new definitive study on Breen, "Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration" (Here's Doherty in last Sunday's Globe on the series.)