Relax . . . It’s Just Sex (1999)
Relax . . . it’s just a movie – and a good one thanks to a sharp script and Jennifer Tilly * * * Relax . . . It’s Just[…]
Author: Gary Morris
Gary Morris founded Bright Lights Film Journal as a print publication in 1974; it became a web-only magazine in 1996. He is the author of the monograph Roger Corman (Twayne Publishers, 1985) and the editor of Action! Interviews with Directors from Classical Hollywood to Contemporary Iran (Anthem Press, 2009). Directors · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
Compulslve Repetitions: Short Works by Martin Arnold
The pleasures and terrors of Old Hollywood from a master manipulator Movies have so much in common with dreams that one of Hollywood’s most enduring nicknames has been “the dream[…]
Experimental & Underground · Reviews · Uncategorized
Decamping with Andy: Outer and Inner Space, Screen Test, Hedy, Horse
What do Edie Sedgwick, Hedy Lamarr, Mary Woronov, and a pack of queer cowpokes have in common? Andy Warhol, natch. The Whitney Museum and New York MOMA’s restoration of Andy[…]
Three Homo Classics on DVD: Sex Is . . ., A Very Natural Thing, To Play or to Die
Three historic gay movies from Water Bearer Films It was inevitable that the DVD market would move beyond the blockbusters and so-called reference disks (those mindless actioners like Armageddon whose[…]
Edge of Seventeen (1999): Coming of Age and Coming Out in the Glamorous ’80s
Teenage coming-of-age romantic comedies were once exclusively hetero terrain. Homophobic Hollywood couldn’t conceive of a queer Pretty in Pink during the 1980s, when John Hughes reigned supreme at the box[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Four Metzger Classics on DVD: Therese and Isabelle; Camille 2000; The Lickerish Quartet; Score
Metzger madness begins in earnest with the release of four of his best on DVD “Art” has long functioned as a code word for erotica in certain contexts. Phrases like[…]
Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Of Loincloths and Lamé: “Sons of Hercules” at the 1999 SFILGFF
These mincing musclequeens might as well be Hercules’ daughters! Among the 1999 San Francisco Lesbian & Gay Film Festival’s dog-and-pony shows, Sons of Hercules promises to be one of the[…]
Contested Flesh: Vicky Funari’s Paulina (1997)
Land rights and body rights clash in this striking docudrama about a woman wronged Sixty-year-old housekeeper Paulina Cruz Suarez grew up in the Mexican village of Puntilla, Veracruz. At the[…]
Sweet Music: The Boys in the Band (1970)
“Seven tired screaming fairy queens and one anxious queer” — our beloved boys are all dressed up and back on screen. If William Friedkin’s grim gay thriller Cruising (1980) continues[…]
Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Mike Hoolboom’s Panic Bodies (1997)
The tragedy of the temporal dominates the work of this gifted Canadian experimental filmmaker In the opening segment of Panic Bodies (1998), Canadian filmmaker Mike Hoolboom talks poetically about the[…]
Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Hallelujah and Pass the Steak Knife: Cutting Up with Ron Athey (1998)
Flashing needles and literal crowns of thorn mark the work — and the body — of performance artist Ron Athey Modern primitives don’t get quite the respect they used to.[…]
Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
“My Penis! Where Is My Penis?” John Greyson’s Uncut (1997)
The man who gave us Urinal and Lillies now turns his playful eye on circumcision, copyright, and Pierre Trudeau. In his early short film, The Making of Monsters (1991), Canadian[…]
Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer
Edgeplay, Anyone? Everett Lewis’s Skin and Bone (1996)
Writer-director Everett Lewis takes us, ready or not, into a particularly nasty demimonde. With the increasing mainstreaming of cinematic homosexuality, there’s a distinct allure to movies that insist on showing[…]
Actors & Personalities · Interviews
“I’m Not the Statue of Liberty”: An Interview with Sylvia Miles
The dragon-voiced diva chats us up Sylvia Miles’ reputation in the 1970s was based on three things: her 6-minute bit as a New York hooker in Midnight Cowboy, her peerless[…]
All Is Grace: The films of Robert Bresson
Poetry in motion: Bresson resurrected and renewed There aren’t many art forms where commercial success is relentlessly equated with aesthetic worth. In painting, the idea that Walter Keane is a[…]
Dark Truths: Notes on William Friedkin
Presenting the impresario of the deviant demimonde: William Friedkin William Friedkin’s career is a study in contradictions. A liberal intellectual by nature who made two of the most notorious works[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Uncategorized
Sadie Benning’s Pixel Pleasures
What mysterious force lay behind the teenage grrrl’s crudely drawn but strangely evocative masks? Sadie Benning has been a cause celebre in the queer community for almost a decade. Born[…]
Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Two Early Warhols: Screen Test #2 and Restaurant
Ronald Tavel, Mario Montez, and Edie Sedgwick strut their superstardom in these early works by the master of pop kitsch camp For most people, the quintessential “Andy Warhol film” is[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground
“Sorry! It Had to Be Done!” Radical Actioner Kurt Kren
Presenting Kurt Kren — humble bank teller by day, radical action naked performance artist by night! The exigencies of living and working miles from the mainstream can prevent even the[…]
Directors · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Paul Morrissey on DVD: Four Camp Classics
Sluts, stoners, and screeching drag queens decorate Morrissey’s curdled campfests Gerri Miller: “You used to be dynamite, Joe. Don’t you miss it?” Joe Dallesandro: “Uh … yeah.” – Trash It’s[…]
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