Essays · LGBT & Queer · Politics · Romance · Russia
“The history of ideas is the history of the spite of certain solitaries.” – E. M. Cioran, All Gall Is Divided * * * It was at the 1934 First[…]
Drama · Essays · Film Crews · Hollywood · News · Production · Production History · Stuntwork
Even if Rust is defined as professional by its crew, the danger that allows a crew member to die cannot coexist with the description of professional. If that is professional,[…]
As American Beauty deals with visualized and thematic pleasure by giving us “beauty” in both sexualized and desexualized forms, and Ripley makes us feel like a voyeur alongside its protagonist[…]
A plot device where an unexpected event resolves a seemingly unsolvable problem is called a “deus ex machina” which translates to “god from the machine” in Latin; it often refers[…]
“Death is the mother of beauty.” – Wallace Stevens “I choose the ugly as well as the beautiful, knowing it will all be beautiful soon enough.” – Marvin Bell *[…]
The death of the animal allows for an altering of the visual dynamic that is often inaccessible through traditional mechanisms of film, and, through harnessing and disrupting the tenuous balance[…]
Directors · Essays · Experimental & Underground · French Cinema
Carax suggests that the constant availability of images as immaterial streams – reduced to binary code and accessible through handheld devices – has diminished their impact. One of the film’s[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · Essays
Cruise’s performance as Mackey offers a unique opportunity to make sense of a Tate, and to see what all really lies right under the surface of this ongoing phenomenon. *[…]
Essays · Movies · Philosophy
Before any immediate plot, the viewer is invited to experience time, allowing images to speak before words, establishing a dialogue between the contemplative time on the screen and the subjective[…]
Activist & Political · Class System · Crime · Essays · Franchises & Series · Myth and Archetype · Outsiders · Politics · SF & Fantasy · Societal Trends · Superheroes
If you want to make a popular blockbuster, it better be about the right kind of person – and the right kind of person isn’t a loser. A decade ago,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · Essays · Romance
As with Monroe, his seemingly all-but-transparent method has proven remarkably difficult to emulate, much less duplicate. (Toles, 2003: 34) Whatever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type? That was[…]
Essays · Exploitation & Erotica · LGBT & Queer
Normalizing “deviant” genders and bodies is just one of many tropes in Wood’s complex camp classic.
African · African American · Drama · Essays · Exile and Displacement · Family · Historical & Epic · Race · SF & Fantasy
A think piece discussing the movies Antebellum, Black Panther, Django Unchained, Get Out, and Us. It compares their reception and portrayal of anti-black racism and black suffering, via the lens[…]
Animation · Essays · Fairy Tale · Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy
Looking back to the original Toy Story series, it seems obvious that one of the things that really helps Buzz accept his child’s toy nature is that he is good[…]
Directors · Essays · Genres · Horror
Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933, making him 89 years old on this day in 2023. We mark the occasion – we won’t say celebrate – by republishing Elise[…]
If Curtis Harrington had not had the ruined mall of hell unveiled to the world in 1905 as Venice of America as a setting for his occult fable, he might[…]
Drama · Dreams · Essays · French Cinema
to Lyssa You either go mad, or you learn about metaphors. – Allie Light * * * fou (masculine): crazy, mad, madman; see l’amour fou folle (feminine): crazy, mad, madwoman;[…]
Absurdism · Drama · Essays · Media · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
“Where’s the TV Guide?” – last line of the film * * * Introduction Truman Burbank exits the only world he knows. We – the television audience in the film,[…]
Billy Wilder (1906-2002) died on March 27, age 95. We honor him by reposting Jason Carpenter’s fine analysis of the master’s work, first published in Bright Lights in 2016. *[…]
Drama · Eco · Eco-horror · Essays
What does a scar tell us about a person? Where they’ve been, what they’ve been through, the style in which they conduct their lives. A scar is a reminder, an[…]
