John Engle is a retired professor of literature from the Université de Toulon. A UCLA PhD and native Californian, he has written and spoken on an eclectic range of subjects, including modern poetry, postwar fiction, the history of education, bilingualism and intercultural communication, surfing and the beachspace, rock music, and the Irish composer Seán Ó Riada. In addition to his contributions to Bright Lights Film Journal, he has recently written on Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, film adaptations of Jane Eyre, and cinematic and video game representations of the Crusades. He is the author of the acclaimed work Surfing in the Movies: A Critical History and, as J. D. Engle, Two Seasons, a 2022 sequel to Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. 
Comedy · Drama · Family · French Cinema
As a film within the evolving Klapisch oeuvre, what La Venue de l’Avenir (2025) looks forward toward remains, of course, to be seen. As a capstone at this point in[…]
Essays · Historical & Epic · War
. . . or how the first surf films helped American men get over the war and change their act * * * In the 1950s and early ’60s, a[…]
While it’s always difficult to make such a claim with assurance – for decades Disney’s 1937 Goofy feature Hawaiian Holiday was confidently thought to hold that honor – Bobby Bumps[…]
Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore, Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair. — Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
“If Kechiche treats political tragedy, then, it is first by creating abundantly detailed, richly convincing comédie humaine, and nowhere is this more apparent than in what is justly considered his major achievement, La Graine et le Mulet.”
“A human being lives out not only his personal life as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the lives of his epoch and his contemporaries.” —Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
