DVD & Blu-ray · Historical & Epic · Reviews
“What do such large loose baggy monsters, with their queer elements of the accidental and the arbitrary, artistically mean?” – Henry James, from the preface of his novel The Tragic[…]
Composers · Historical & Epic · Reviews · Silents
This is an updated and revised version of Gordon Thomas’s article first posted in Bright Lights in May 2006, reposted to celebrate Easter. * * * Bigger is better this[…]
Drama · Historical & Epic · Women in Film
These women want their words to be heard. They want their will to be known. They want to be able to change their minds. And they want the full mind-body[…]
Historical & Epic · Religion & Spirituality
Risen is the product of a sub-industry whose primary source of success is in providing pious pablum for a complacent and undiscriminating Christian market (although, to be fair, this market[…]
Designers · Historical & Epic · Interviews
Queen Anne’s bed was hand built, hand carved and painted. It was 14 feet high with four mattresses and layers of beautiful bedding. The bed is a fairly accurate queen’s[…]
Film Technology & History · Historical & Epic
Through its complex use of multiple depth planes, deep-focus compositions, close proximity with on-screen texture, Pompeii crafts a vision of an ancient culture that can be described as hyper-haptic; 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[…]
Drama · Historical & Epic · War
The Third Man ends with rejection, physical and emotional death, a descent into a sewer, a walk through a graveyard and cold silence. The ruins of Vienna come to symbolize[…]
Actors & Personalities · Festivals & Awards · Historical & Epic
The moral of this particular dose of Oscar reality: You don’t have to be a royal to grab the Academy’s attention, but it sure helps if you’re pretending to be[…]
Activist & Political · Historical & Epic · LGBT & Queer
Ironically, with the passing of the Singapore of yesteryear, the work that best captures the significant geographical landmarks lost to time is not a local film or documentary, but a[…]
Historical & Epic · Horror · Women in Film
The Witch is about what is in woman that is presumed not to exist, because it cannot be seen. * * * Robert Altman’s 3 Women is mostly a high-kitsch[…]
Wonderstruck seems a retreat from some of Haynes’ established themes, in that it’s not set in the fifties and, as a PG-rated, child-oriented adventure film, instead pursues the marvelous and[…]
Haynes spares us slack-jawed bug-eyed Spielbergian reactions shots, but he also denies us deep emotional engagement. The visuals shadow and overwhelm the actors as they wander the bustling Haynes-Selznick landscapes.[…]
Historical & Epic · LGBT & Queer
There are two major threads here. In one, the queer figure from history becomes a way to explore the consequences of existing in a society that wars against the individual’s[…]
A particular issue is the degree to which the film departs from “fact.” Significant departures from the historical record, if they become frequent enough, are sufficient to sabotage any “historical[…]
Though some have criticized Nolan’s rigidity and near mathematical precision in tackling a historical event (no doubt provoked by the director’s admittedly frustrating tendency to wax philosophic on his own[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Historical & Epic · SF & Fantasy
Several questions suggest themselves. What ideological framework is revealed by the forwarding of a contemporary story in which the white man has lost his mojo and needs to struggle to[…]
Much of The Lost City of Z is genuinely gripping, in part because the hardships and horrors it depicts are presented so matter-of-factly. A tribe of hostile natives, who at first[…]
Biopic · Historical & Epic · War
Repeatedly, the tragedies in Marty’s life lead him to question the worth of life, and repeatedly the order and stability of the parade re-enters to ease his mind, allowing him[…]
Designers · Historical & Epic · Horror
The Witch thrives on its damning details. It seems authentically claustrophobic and austere. Threats to faith take their toll. The untouched surroundings and natural lighting allow each period detail revelrous[…]
