Bright Lights, Big City
Michael J. Fox plays the most sympathetic cocaine addict you've ever seen  in the movie of Jay McInerney's popular novelBright Lights, Big  City, the book that famously chronicled the coke- and cash-fueled era  of the 1980s. Jamie Conway (Fox) works as a fact-checker for a major New  York magazine, but because he spends his nights partying with his glib  best friend (Kiefer Sutherland), he's on the verge of getting fired. His  wife, a fast-rising model (Phoebe Cates), just left him; he's still  reeling from the death of his mother (Dianne Wiest) a year earlier; and  he's obsessed with a tabloid story about a pregnant woman in a coma.Bright Lights, Big Citydoesn't have much of a plot, but in its  meandering way it captures some of the glossy chaos of the time and of a  man desperately trying to escape the pain in his life.--Bret  Fetzer