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). “I refuse to fever in the lousy ballroom of Mongkok!” Hong Kong cinema is in clear disarray with the transfer to China, a star system in virtual collapse, talent dispersing[…]
The future’s no future, but that’s okay – your spaceship is almost ready! Science fiction is, inevitably, an American genre, its narratives – literary and cinematic – fueled by the[…]
Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
The world’s biggest lesbian and gay filmfest shows the pleasures and pitfalls of gay auteurs caught between assimilation and opposition. Watch out for the “Stepford” homosexual! Gay culture is at[…]
Noon isn’t the only thing that’s purple in this continental ode to Alain Delon’s crotch. Some “classics” earn that status from innovative mise en scene, others from memorable performances, still[…]
Documentaries · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Queer activism circa 1978 showed a diverse optimistic community moving ever closer to unity — before the body blow of AIDS. Porn directors aren’t usually known for their political consciousness;[…]
In a cinema crowded with self-conscious transgressions, Kim offers the real article when she strips to show her straight boyfriend the thrilling secrets of the altered body. Transsexual imagery has typically[…]
The theme of the latest edition of the acclaimed PBS queer newsmagazine is the queer body and the queer body politic under assault. The body as battleground is the tacit[…]
Asian · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Hong Kong’s gender-benders are the stuff of legend; director Patrick Chan adds two key works to the canon in these 1996 bookend satires of fame, pop music, and forbidden kisses.[…]
Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of “Adults Only” Cinema,by Eddie Muller and Daniel Faris (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996, 157 pp., $19.95) Surrealist poet Paul Eluard once said, “There is[…]
“America consistently countered the growing concepts of black pride and power with a virtual army of self-sacrificing mammy figures (both male and female), pimps, whores, ‘great black hopes,’ and the[…]
Roeg drags us into a nightmare of sophisticated sadomasochism – and we don’t object Nicholas Roeg’s new film opens with images of disconnected body parts – a man’s leg washed[…]
“His Finzi-Continis, set in the years 1938 to 1943, is an autumnal work in two senses – the subject is the last golden flash of freedom before one of history’s major tragedies,[…]
“The Blade is the director’s paean to the muscular, exposed male body and a virtual catalog of ways to assault it – pummeling, whipping, biting, beating, and hacking . . .” Tsui Hark’s[…]
“Her mechanistic thinking precludes her from pursuing the noodle vendor in the usual ways; she can only see him after she has killed, and her sudden appearances and disappearances in[…]
African American · Historical & Epic · Reviews
“America consistently countered the growing concepts of black pride and power with a virtual army of self-sacrificing mammy figures (both male and female), pimps, whores, ‘great black hopes,’ and the[…]
Every religion needs a church, and camp followers have worshipped regularly at San Francisco’s Castro Theatre for two decades. John Lennon’s famous quote that the Beatles were more popular than[…]
Directors · Interviews · Silents
Outtakes from an Interview with Dwan, December 1980 * * * Fairbanks, Shirley Temple, Ronald Reagan, all the “pansies and poseurs of Hollywood” – no one was safe from the[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer
Junkies, queens, washed-up B-movie hags – these are the scintillating “family values” advocates that campmeister and right-wing Republican Morrissey serves up. * * * Much of the myth, if we[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian · Historical & Epic · Reviews
This epic set in the 16th century deals with war, honor, courage, and yes, that homo subtext ever present in male bonding movies – punctuated by Toshiro Mifune’s bold butt-baring[…]
See Val Kilmer feed psychedelic mushrooms to the crazed beast-people! See Aissa’s forbidden jungle dance! See the terrible white monster who lumbers across the sets in pancake makeup and Bea[…]
