Robert Castle has been contributing to Bright Lights Film Journal since 2000. His book The Interpretive Odyssey of Stanley Kubrick, is available on Kindle. In 2006, his first books were published: The End of Travel, a memoir (Ravenna Books); Odd Pursuits, a collection of 16 stories (Wild Child Publishing); and A Sardine on Vacation, fiction based on the feature columns appearing in Unlikely Stories (Spuyten Duyvil). His new novel, The Hidden Life (Atmosphere Press), is available at Amazon. 
Comedy · Historical & Epic · Native Americans · Revisionism · Westerns
Buffalo Bill and the Indians joins a select group of films whose popular failure nonetheless represented an aesthetic success: Patty Hearst (1987) and The King of Comedy (1983), come to[…]
Absurdism · Comedy · Drama · French Cinema · Mystery · Psychology
The question becomes: is it worth trying to be free? Is the struggle fruitless? Why can’t we escape our servitude to the past, to society, to others? * * *[…]
Drama · Horror · Women in Film
The movie is, literally, a projection of our mental landscape. We passively sit back (like Jeffries in Rear Window) and the world appears as we live and make it. We[…]
We can further associate the filmmaker, the man with whom we’ve placed our narrative trust, with the “psycho” of both the title and our typical image of one, the latter[…]
Horror · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
It’s your thing, do what you wanna do, I can’t tell you who to sock it to. – Isley Brothers What in the thing is thingly? What is the thing[…]
Celebrity Culture · Drama · Essays
While Rupert isn’t interested in a crisscross murder, he certainly wants Jerry to spot him a segment on Jerry’s show. This is more than a favor..And he appears to go[…]
Activist & Political · Essays · SF & Fantasy
Suddenly, Gort doesn’t seem so powerful. We’re told of his strength and given a few meager examples. We have to take Klaatu’s word for it. The universe/world policeman is a[…]
Peckinpah’s ethics and form are evinced best in his sixth film, Straw Dogs, where we also discover the key to his aesthetic of violence. David Sumner takes a sabbatical to Yorkshire,[…]
“Are we trapped like Truman? Is this why we want him to leave his world? Then what will we do? Turn off the set? Leave our society with its endless[…]
“The beauty of Being There‘s satire lies in the strategy of depicting both television and its effects in a single man whose personality absorbs friend and foe, combines idiocy and[…]
“Where many people watch a film for a true or faithful rendition of an historical event, I needed confirmation that the thing I was viewing was . . . made up!”
“Both films suggest Europe has run aground spiritually, as they both depict the Catholic Church and its representatives to be as bloodthirsty as the conquistadors.”
“That what we now call ‘the media’ could be a threat to society was not necessarily an unknown topic before television. From the 1930s, movies had recognized the manipulative side of the press.”
Lists · Movies · Writers & Critics
“I want my favorites to get the high ratings — my judgments are being challenged by anonymous forces whom I cannot confront.”
“His plan mirrors Johnny’s, that is, pieces of the plan are known to one person: Johnny and Stanley; and not until the end do we see most of their pieces come into place.
“What is this New York-ness?”
“To be a star, or thought of as a star, was not enough.”
“He is an itinerant hero, a lone samurai whose mask is his blindness, a mask that hides his many strengths. I am always looking for new cinematic vistas. New directors,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Genres
All movies have the potential to become a non-movie, particularly when the movie showcases a cause, a disease, a celebrity, an actor’s virtuosity, a play or musical. The movie becomes[…]
