Bright Lights Film Journal

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    • Joel Potrykus talks Vulcanizadora, Being “Really Immature,” and What He Thinks Hell Is Like

      May 16, 2025

    • Oscar Nom Bomb: 2025 Drops a New Deus ex Machina in the Oscar Machine

      May 10, 2025

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  • Comedy · Directors · Indies · Interviews · Thrillers & Action

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    Joel Potrykus talks Vulcanizadora, Being “Really Immature,” and What He Thinks Hell Is Like

    • May 16, 2025

    I love it when someone just absolutely shoves the vision down your throat. * * * Vulcanizadora, Joel Potrykus’ fifth feature film, hit the festival circuit last spring with a[…]

  • Essays

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    Oscar Nom Bomb: 2025 Drops a New Deus ex Machina in the Oscar Machine

    • May 10, 2025

    A plot device where an unexpected event resolves a seemingly unsolvable problem is called a “deus ex machina” which translates to “god from the machine” in Latin; it often refers[…]

  • Class System · Documentaries · Drama · Eco

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    Class, Capitalism, and Freedom: Connecting Jorge Furtado’s Ilha das Flores and Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite

    • May 5, 2025

    At first glance, Ilha das Flores and Parasite, separated by thirty years, appear to have little in common. Despite their many surface-level differences, however, they bear striking similarities. Both are[…]

  • Psychology · Religion & Spirituality · SF & Fantasy

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    Salvation from the Skies: Carl Jung Watches The Day the Earth Stood Still

    • April 30, 2025

    In the same way that reading Jung can provide insight into The Day the Earth Stood Still, it is also the case that watching the movie can illuminate aspects of[…]

Most Recent

Drama · Sex & Relationships

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The Myth of Los Angeles’ (Fiery) Destruction and the People Who Tell a Different Story: From Souls for Sale (1923) to Model Shop (1969)

  • April 25, 2025

You need the virus to build the antidote, and so it should come as no surprise that movies made in Los Angeles are among the most powerful remedies to the[…]

Drama · Essays

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“Look Closer”: The Life Behind American Beauty

  • April 20, 2025

“Death is the mother of beauty.” – Wallace Stevens “I choose the ugly as well as the beautiful, knowing it will all be beautiful soon enough.” – Marvin Bell *[…]

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Directors · Drama · Religion & Spirituality

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The Secret of Creativity: The Inspirations of Paul Schrader’s First Reformed

  • April 15, 2025

“That’s the secret of creativity. You have to steal around. If you keep going back to that same 7-Eleven, they’re going to catch you. So you go over to the[…]

Horror

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Day of the Dead, a Woman’s Nightmare, and Post-Capitalist Possibilities

  • April 10, 2025

Instead of a shape-shifting alien that overtakes its human hosts, capitalism is represented in Romero’s film by the military and to a lesser extent, the zombies. Zombies have long been[…]

Animals · Essays

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On Electrocuting an Elephant and Animal Death in Film

  • April 5, 2025

The death of the animal allows for an altering of the visual dynamic that is often inaccessible through traditional mechanisms of film, and, through harnessing and disrupting the tenuous balance[…]

Music & Musicals

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Last Play: All of the Surviving Footage of the Beatles’ February 10, 1967 “A Day in the Life” Session

  • March 30, 2025

We watch, and it feels like anything could happen at a session that doubled as once-in-a-zeitgeist party, with Beatles, a host of rock luminaries – Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Donovan,[…]

Directors · Essays · Experimental & Underground · French Cinema

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Forever Alex: Leos Carax’s It’s Not Me (C’est pas moi, 2024)

  • March 24, 2025

Carax suggests that the constant availability of images as immaterial streams – reduced to binary code and accessible through handheld devices – has diminished their impact. One of the film’s[…]

Actors & Personalities · Drama · Westerns · Women in Film

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Tea in Monument Valley: On Vera Miles and The Searchers

  • March 17, 2025

An excerpt from Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away, to be released March 25 by University Press of Kentucky, exploring Miles’s impressive career and her relationships with the[…]

Alcoholism · Drama

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Leaving Las Vegas Turns 30: A Savior-Less Portrait of Liquor-Soaked Love and Despair Not for the Faint of Heart

  • March 11, 2025

“I don’t know if I started drinking ‘cause my wife left me or my wife left me ‘cause I started drinking but fuck it anyway.” – Ben Sanderson, Leaving Las[…]

Actors & Personalities · Drama · Essays

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In Magnolia, Tom Cruise Far Outperformed Real-Life Andrew Tate

  • March 6, 2025

Cruise’s performance as Mackey offers a unique opportunity to make sense of a Tate, and to see what all really lies right under the surface of this ongoing phenomenon. *[…]

Actors & Personalities

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Claudette Colbert, Director?

  • February 28, 2025

The untold story of how the screen comedy queen of the 1930s and ‘40s nearly become one of very few women to direct feature films in postwar Hollywood. * *[…]

Directors

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Two Ends Without a Middle: On David Lynch’s Kitsch

  • February 22, 2025

David Lynch died on January 15, 2025 at age 78. We celebrate this important auteur with the following analysis of some of the less remarked Lynchian themes and his work[…]

Aging · Class System · Drama · Hollywood

0

The Right Picture: Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow, the So-Called Most Depressing Movie of All Time

  • February 16, 2025

We are grateful that Bark and Lucy and what they represent are able to exist. That such people have gone before, even if it meant going before in a work[…]

Historical & Epic · Politics · Religion & Spirituality · Satire · Sex & Relationships

0

Horny Abbess, Empty Relic, Open Fortress, Public Toilet: Reconnecting with Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971)

  • February 10, 2025

Russell’s principal avatar in this film is Louis XIII, the Carnival King and Lord of Misrule. Devoted to ersatz relics and to his “tacky stage farce,” he quietly uncovers not[…]

AI · Asian · Philosophy · Revolution · SF & Fantasy

0

The Ignition of Species Being: A Marxian Reading of The Wandering Earth 2

  • February 4, 2025

ABSTRACT Marx’s idea of species being is the recognition by humans that their work is carried out for the sake of other humans (rather than for any god or ruler).[…]

Drama · LGBT & Queer · Romance

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Boy Meets Boy: Young Hearts Ushers In a New Era of Queer Cinema

  • January 31, 2025

Elias does not label his sexuality, simply telling his mother: “I’m in love with Alexander.” That neither Elias nor Alexander labels his sexuality serves the film well. It is an[…]

Activist & Political · Counterculture · Drama · Exploitation & Erotica · Indies · LGBT & Queer · Neo-Noir · New Genres · Noir · Road Movies · Sex & Relationships

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Queer Is the New Noir: How Femme, Love Lies Bleeding, and Drive Away Dolls Queer Up the Genre

  • January 25, 2025

Though several deliciously sordid queer noirs have made their way into the cultural fabric of the past decades (Mulholland Dr. [2001], Stranger By The Lake [2013], The Handmaiden [2016]), 2024[…]

Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors · Drama

0

A Fresh Face in the Crowd: Judy Holliday in George Cukor’s The Marrying Kind

  • January 19, 2025

“A true artist” Cukor called Judy Holliday. “She could interpret a text with the subtlest detail.” Their creative relationship brought out the qualities that made her a new kind of[…]

Crime · LGBT & Queer · Men & Masculinity · Sex & Relationships

0

Cruising: The Boys in (Black and) Blue

  • January 13, 2025

“I don’t make a film because I’m against something. For that matter, I don’t make a film because I’m for something — don’t make propaganda. If anything, all the films[…]

Essays · Movies · Philosophy

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Sacred Time, Profane Screen: The Persistence of Mystical Contemplation in Cinema

  • January 8, 2025

Before any immediate plot, the viewer is invited to experience time, allowing images to speak before words, establishing a dialogue between the contemplative time on the screen and the subjective[…]

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