Drama · Eco · Eco-horror · Horror
I’ve detailed each film to convey the strange and strict extent to which they each cohere to one base fear: reproductive control. The only hope for human survival in Phase[…]
In my theater’s showing, the instant that Fjölnir lost his head in the climactic volcano battle, an elderly woman left her seat, lingering at the door a moment before exiting.[…]
Costume Drama · Designers · Drama · Fashion · Melodrama · Photo Essays · Romance
In difficult times, fashion is always outrageous. – Elsa Schiaparelli * * * Edgar G. Ulmer’s Her Sister’s Secret was released to theaters the same year as Mitchell Leisen’s 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 · Women in Film · Writers & Critics
We come to find out as viewers, whether we believe in Leda’s self-governing comportment at the beginning or not, that this task of motherhood is never-ending; each work demonstrates to[…]
African American · Drama · Dreams · Horror · Urban Conflict
Good mornin’, Mr. Benson, I see you’re doin’ well. If I had me a shotgun I’d blow you straight to hell. – Robert Hunter/Jerry Garcia, “Candyman,” 1970 * * *[…]
Drama · War · Writers & Critics
The refugees’ babel is a constant background presence in Seghers’s novel, a kind of Greek chorus commenting on the various ship arrivals and departures, and spreading news of any developments[…]
In the corporate world the film depicts, the lower-level executives are small-time Lotharios who seek no more than sex from female underlings. Their boss, however, battens on the love he[…]
Directors · Drama · Outsiders · War · Writers & Critics
Rumanian refugee Georges Iscovescu (Charles Boyer) conning a guileless California schoolteacher, Emmy Brown (Olivia de Havilland, in an Oscar-nominated role), into marrying him so he can enter the United States[…]
Crime · Drama · Production History
“Dedicated to Charlie Bluhdorn who inspired it.” * * * Not only is Mario Puzo’s The Godfather the stuff of Hollywood legend, but so is its turbulent production. Even after[…]
Counterculture · Directors · Drama · Interviews · Restorations
Dennis wasn’t originally hired to direct Out of the Blue, rather he was hired to act in it. After about a week of shooting, the production manager, Paul Lewis, who[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Drama · Silents · Women in Film
If she is seen simply as a free spirit, a woman who lives for sexual pleasure, and as exemplary on that account, a model liberated woman (as Louise Brooks herself[…]
Drama · DVD & Blu-ray · German Cinema
Its release on Blu-ray is in some ways a belated victory for the film, whose unsuccessful release in the United States eighty-five years ago was a disappointment to Trenker and[…]
African American · Drama · Melodrama · Reviews · Women in Film
This article appeared first in our all-Sirk print issue (#6, Winter 1977) and was reposted in the March 1997 online version of Bright Lights. We present it here to celebrate[…]
Directors · Drama · Production History
For all his flaws, Welles was not a man with a fear of completion, but rather one who would hold on to finishing his work to the absolute breaking point.[…]
Drama · DVD & Blu-ray · Women in Film
The relative obscurity of van Brakel’s works gives these decades-old films a sort of newness. Indeed, there’s a genuineness in the films that seems foreign, even exotic, in our streaming[…]
Human beings have an infinite capacity to adapt to the most adverse circumstances; what other animal can thrive in both the hottest deserts and the coldest mountains? Watching Room, I[…]
Actors & Personalities · Colonialism · Drama · Essays · Historical & Epic · Philosophy · Religion & Spirituality · Writers & Critics
Near the close of our Skype meeting, my conversation with James Fox turned inside out. He enquired if he could ask me a question. He then tried to assemble the[…]
Trauma can plant its seed-bomb in the minefield of a vulnerable mind, a risk every participant in war takes, and one the film addresses in several contexts. For the viewer,[…]
Activist & Political · Biopic · Documentaries · Drama · Eastern European · Middle East
Like Assayas’s Carlos, Ujică’s Autobiography mostly remains an investigation of a public figure in its public functions. And both films subtly decenter their Big Man of History protagonists. Both document[…]
