Fellini’s Variety Lights on DVD
A tacky theatrical troupe finds fun and romance – and occasionally a paycheck – on the road in Fellini’s classic Variety Lights (1950) is a rarity in the career of Federico[…]
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). Documentaries · Experimental & Underground
Documentaries: Peter Wintonick’s Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment (2000)
The “moment” is both defined and celebrated in this exceptional documentary “I don’t know what truth is. Truth is something unattainable. We can’t think we’re creating truth with a camera.[…]
Masterpieces of Japanese Silent Cinema on DVD-ROM
Japanese silent films are no longer silent in this fabulous – and expensive – DVD-ROM Western interest in Japanese film falls mainly into three realms: the Godzilla movies and their endless cheesy[…]
Chabrol, Losey, Antonioni: Three Classic Eurofilms: Les Bonnes Femmes, Eva, Il Grido on DVD
“La dolce vita” is more bitter than sweet in these razor-sharp rarities DVD has become the preeminent forum for high-art cinema on video, and the trend shows no sign of[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
A Black Silence Almost as Violent as Laughter: Jean Cocteau’s Orphic Trilogy
The arthouse staple gets a gorgeous makeover in this DVD set brimming with extras Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) has been called the most versatile artist of the twentieth century, and in[…]
Three Early Kurosawas: Drunken Angel, Scandal, I Live in Fear
Tubercular yakuza, scandalous artists, and postwar paranoids duke it out with the world For a variety of reasons, Western audiences have enshrined Kurosawa as the preferred director of Japan’s golden[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground
Tableaux Vivant: Notes on Lawrence Jordan
Jordan’s collage films are “moving” in two senses “Animation” connotes many things to us jaded moderns – Bugs Bunny and variants, the dreaded Disney and its hellspawn, Spike and Mike[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground
Brief Candles: The Films of Warren Sonbert
The work of an avant-garde master restored I had the privilege of sitting with Warren Sonbert (1947-1995) at some of San Francisco’s press screenings in the several years that preceded[…]
“Are You Sure?” Edgar G. Ulmer’s Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957)
Monsters are bad enough, but how about all those relatives? For cinema, the postwar period – particularly the 1950s when atomic consciousness became a permanent part of America’s psychic landscape[…]
“No Man Is a Saint”: Douglas Sirk’s A Scandal in Paris (1946)
“What distinguishes A Scandal in Paris is its additional air of evanescence, as if the Old Europe of charming woodland merry-go-rounds and dowagers in castles and romantic criminals was now a[…]
Burning Love: Deepa Mehta’s Fire (1996)
The first of the Canadian-Indian auteur’s controversial attacks on the privileges of patriarchy Fire is a fascinating anomaly. It’s an Indian feature written and directed by a woman, Deepa Mehta;[…]
Teetering Teens: From the Edge of the City (1998)
Couldn’t they have just sent us a postcard? Following in the footsteps of those overrated paeans to teenage male angst, Hate and Trainspotting (with a dash of My Own Private[…]
Ozon Meets Fassbinder: Water Drops on Burning Rocks (2000)
A stylized look at one of the colder corners of gay petit bourgeois life Water Drops on Burning Rocks was Fassbinder’s first play, written at age 19. Shelved and apparently[…]
Documentaries · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
A Tired Bag of Tricks: Nick Broomfield’s Fetishes
Literal commodity fetishism in the far fringes of New York’s S&M scene In the mid-’70s, I spent some time in Los Angeles in the hetero s&m subculture. My best friend[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Reviews
Truth and Consequences: Long Night’s Journey into Day (2000)
Post-apartheid South Africa’s rituals of admission and absolution Civilized societies, an oxymoronic phrase to some observers, choose to deal with the aftermath of large-scale violence in different ways. Sometimes there[…]
Fall 2000’s Queer Films: From Paragraph 175 to Urbania
Gay werewolves, the Marquis De Sade, and a mean one-legged nun: The tortured queens and killer dykes of yesteryear make way for more rarified queer types this season. Queer and[…]
Book review: Celluloid Mavericks, by Greg Merritt
Celluloid Mavericks: A History of American Independent Film, by Greg Merritt. Thunder’s Mouth Press. Paperback. Suggested list price: $18.95. There are plenty of film histories, but not so many of[…]
Documentaries · Music & Musicals · Reviews
The Sex Pistols Wallow in The Filth and the Fury
Rock’s aging bad boys finally give it up The 25-year hissy fit between Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols continues to rage in Julian Temple’s engaging documentary about everybody’s favorite[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Interviews
“Not That I’m Horatio Alger”: Russ Meyer on The Supervixens
SuperRuss speaks! I interviewed Russ Meyer in 1974 at his office in Los Angeles. He answered the door himself, dressed in red jockey shorts with a strip of film dangling over his[…]
Noir · Reviews · Uncategorized
High Gallows: Revisiting Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past
Jacques Tourneur’s riveting 1947 film noir, usually ranked as one of the best of the genre, was adapted from Daniel Mainwaring’s evocatively titled novel Build My Gallows High (published under the name Geoffrey[…]
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