Music & Musicals · TV & Streaming
Something to Sing About: Why Cop Rock Fails
“The height of the Bush era was a weird, giddy time.” – Stephen Thomas Erlewine on Milli Vanilli’s Girl You Know It’s True (1989) * * * Cop Rock (ABC,[…]
Category: Genres
Drama · Essays · Religion & Spirituality
Reflections on Relational and Individual Fulfillment by Way of Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story
Dare to step together into an “usness” that has no guarantees but the shared vision of belonging, whose embers you agree to slowly tend. History provides the furnishings that are[…]
Drama · Essays · Literature and Film · Westerns
“You Don’t Know the Story”: Horseman, Pass By and the Misprision of Hud
We must dissect why Hud succeeded with reviewers and audiences alike, but to differing effects. The task at hand is not merely to provide a clear analysis of the issues[…]
Literature and Film · Thrillers & Action · Writers & Critics
Six Ways of Looking at Martin Ritt’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
A master of the spy novel whose work inspired some of the most memorable films of the genre, John le Carré died on December 12, 2020. We honor him with[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors · Historical & Epic · Politics
Looking at Charlie — Modern Times (An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin)
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[…]
Books · Directors · Women in Film
Book review: Anna Backman Rogers, Sofia Coppola: The Politics of Visual Pleasure
Anna Backman Rogers, Sofia Coppola: The Politics of Visual Pleasure (New York: Berghahn Books, 2019). The Coppola who emerges from Rogers’s study is therefore something of a double agent. On[…]
African American · Documentaries · Place
A Becoming Place: Exploring Victoria (2020)
The film could be described as “meditative,” but with an important twist: while the directors and Lashay guide the audience through a thoughtful and introspective process – making sense of[…]
Essays · Feminism · Women in Film · Work and Workplace
Making Space: Proxima Reckons with Working Motherhood in the Movies
Sarah is a good astronaut because she is a mother, not in spite of it. And she is a good mother because she is a good astronaut. If Sarah were[…]
Counterculture · Music & Musicals · Noir
Punk Rock: The Psychic Soundtrack of Film Noir
In noir, tales of wrongful accusation tend to play out on mean streets that reflect social inequalities, which at times do have a nasty way of tilting normally upright people[…]
Books · Theory · Work and Workplace
Book Review: The Process Genre: Cinema and the Aesthetic of Labor, by Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky
Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky, The Process Genre: Cinema and the Aesthetic of Labor. 2020. Duke University Press, $28.95. Watching someone work is hypnotizing. We might not always enjoy working, but something[…]
Genres · Horror · Producers & Studios
Darkness, Darkness: The Films of Val Lewton: Looking Back at a B-Movie Master
Producer Val Lewton died on this day (March 14) in 1951, age 46. We honor this visionary talent by reposting this profile of Lewton by frequent BLFJ contributor Mark Vieira,[…]
Drama · Reviews · Thrillers & Action
Watch It Again! Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Twelve
Ocean’s Twelve finds itself the black sheep of the trio, inspiring bewilderment and even scorn for its lax attitude toward typical genre beats and for its gutsy meta gambit, which[…]
Digital · Movie Theatres · New Media · TV & Streaming
Movie Theatres: What We Lose in Losing Them
Like it or not, we humans are social creatures. We ride waves of communal feeling all the time. If you like sports, consider sitting in the stands with thousands of[…]
Comedy · Literature and Film · Theory · Writers & Critics
Whodunit? Poe and Dr. Strangelove
The oblique reference to Poe by means of the double POE acronyms, then, can be seen as linking the fundamental prophecy of Dr. Strangelove with the much earlier secular prophecies[…]
Directors · Theory · Writers & Critics
“Letting the contemporary run through you”: The Film Criticism of Olivier Assayas
One of Assayas’s most ferocious articles he ever wrote (and also one of the most theoretical) attacks le cinéma publicitaire – a film aesthetic (associated in France with Jean-Jacques Beineix[…]
Biopic · Drama · Gothic · Mystery · Myth and Archetype · Psychology
Death Came to Charles Foster Kane: Orson Welles in the Underworld
“The opus begins in dying.” – James Hillman “Just as each Gothic tale is itself a dream and also a mirror showing the reader his mind, everything within these symbolic[…]
Activist & Political · Pandemic · SF & Fantasy
Living through a Pandemic and Thinking about E.T.
I can’t believe it took me almost four decades and living through a global pandemic to realize it, but in E.T., Elliott and his motley crew of rascals might well[…]
Costume Drama · Drama · Horror · Literature and Film · Women in Film
“The Shadow and the Ghost”: The Spirit of Hitchcock and Rebecca’s Suspicions of Succession
In transposing Rebecca, notice how Hitchcock’s camera attends to shadows – bisecting faces and bruising frames – to approximate du Maurier’s disorienting syntax and looming dread. Or watch as his[…]
Animation · Counterculture · Cyberpunk · Digital · Essays · New Genres
A Brief History of Slip and Failure: Cyberpunk and the Headroom for Nostalgia in Back to the Future
In refusing to be neither something different nor more of the same, Back to the Future II’s re-filming technique within the original via new VistaGlide technology offered – rather –[…]
The Black Rose in the Garden: A Second Look at The Babadook
Amelia has cultivated a fearful respect of Mr. Babadook. She is in control of him and feeds him worms from her garden. Instead of trying to exorcise the demon, she[…]
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