Documentaries · Film Technology & History · Videos
Herein lies the greater paradox. The attributes that underpinned Blockbuster’s success, and undermined those of others, enabled the creative awakenings of countless people. The Last Blockbuster’s interviewees comment on special[…]
Music & Musicals · TV & Streaming
“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,[…]
Drama · Essays · Religion & Spirituality
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
“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
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
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
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 –[…]
