Drama · Historical & Epic · Holocaust
If the choking of the camp victims is muffled in the film, it is darkly recapitulated in the sputtering coughs that spread through the family, from Höss to Hedwig’s mother.[…]
Crime · Directors · Drama · Historical & Epic
The animal is the only genuine thing in man. – Frank Wedekind * * * A woman sits rhythmically rocking by candlelight, her eyes focused on a distant point. Around[…]
Crime · Drama · Historical & Epic · Indigenous · Native Americans
Killers interweaves the Western, film noir, the gangster film, the police procedural, the courtroom drama, and even a bit of horror; however, it jumps between them with often elliptical editing[…]
African American · Historical & Epic · Reviews
Editor’s note: Bob Keser passed away on Oct. 5, 2015, from cardiac arrest, age 72. Although we never met, he was an important member of the Bright Lights team and a[…]
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[…]
Colonialism · Historical & Epic · Music & Musicals · Myth and Archetype · Native Americans · Westerns
The handful of “frontier operas” we’ll consider therefore propose an unusual dialectic of both aesthetics and ideology. What might occur when male Western heroes – traditionally stoic and pragmatic –[…]
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[…]
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.[…]
Historical & Epic · Medieval · Women in Film
The adaptation is successful not just in its understanding of how irreverent and illogical the narrative space of medieval romance is and always has been, but also in how it[…]
Directors · Historical & Epic · Horror · Politics
I have been a fan of writer/director Larry Cohen ever since viewing his 1970s classics The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977) and It Lives Again (1978). Cohen was[…]
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[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Essays · Historical & Epic · Silents
D. W. Griffith died on July 23, 1948. To commemorate this seminal figure in cinema history, we repost BLFJ regular Gordon Thomas’s deep dive, which first appeared in 2016, into[…]
Classical · Historical & Epic · TV & Streaming
What haunts me in the story of Nero is the mercurial nature of art and fiction. They are good for us only so far as they encourage our well-being. Human[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors · Historical & Epic · Politics
Charlie Chaplin was born on April 16, 1889. To honor the old boy, we herewith present Alan Vanneman’s witty discussion of one of Charlie’s masterpieces, originally published in Bright Lights[…]
Documentaries · Historical & Epic · War
The pair have little in common, but each goes against the grain of how this form is typically used, sacrificing everything else in the pursuit of an important story that[…]
Drama · Historical & Epic · SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming
It is a fascinating exercise to consume this show according to the twenty-first-century rules of binge-watching. As the hours pass and the on-screen death count rises, the sustained passivity of[…]
Drama · Historical & Epic · Women in Film
Where Siegel goes sleazy and conflictual, Coppola goes subtle and sympathetic. Her direction (which won her the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival, making her only the second[…]
Comedy · Counterculture · Crime · Historical & Epic · Hollywood · Movies · Westerns
Who are these people? Watching Cliff try to figure it out is painful, because we know the future, but such knowledge is not power. Within its imagined boundaries, Once Upon[…]
Comedy · Costume Drama · Historical & Epic
This gets at the heart of The Favourite, which is one of the most evident trends in anti-sexist filmmaking lately: to be willing to portray women as unadulteratedly evil, as[…]
Essays · Historical & Epic · Memoir · SF & Fantasy
The Wizard of Oz, the film, turns 80 this year, 2019. To celebrate, we present Amy Kenyon’s striking analysis/memoir, which explores growing up a “rust belt girl” in postwar Detroit[…]
