Essays · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
In honor of its 15th anniversary, Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko plays throughout the U.S. this year starting March 30 at select theaters in a 4K restoration – in some cases in the[…]
Our failures of understanding may express themselves as prejudicial disregard of others of a different color, race, religion, or gender. From this vantage, the film invites the viewer to reflect[…]
Film Technology & History · Sports
There was just one hitch: Rector and his camera operators had to be inside the camera. * * * On March 17, 1897, in an open-air arena in Carson City,[…]
And some are pretty enough / And some are poor indeed; And now again the people / Call it but a weed. – Alfred Lord Tennyson. “The Flower” * * *[…]
Experimental & Underground · Romance · SF & Fantasy
Many have captured in equally luxurious fantasies the Beast that longs in men to be more than he is, and it is this Beast that Disney aims at literal children.[…]
This film is indeed all about catharsis, ours certainly but mostly Logan’s: liberating violence alongside liberal use of profanity, both underpinned by what we know to have been eighteen long[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · New Media
Black Code sheds light on the commercialisation of cybercrime through the development of surveillance malware by security companies for sale to governments. Referring to Orwell’s seminal work 1984, Shehabi notes[…]
With Kong: Skull Island making waves at the box office right now, perhaps it’s time to reintroduce ourselves to the first and, M. C. Myers argues (and we agree), best of the[…]
Crime · Drama · Thrillers & Action
This article inaugurates a new department at Bright Lights, revisiting a film from the past that is being given new life through a new release or a different medium, in[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries
On this day, March 9, 1959, Barbie was introduced to the world at New York’s American International Toy Fair. The date also became Barbie’s official birthday. She’s 58. To honor/revile what[…]
Much of the reason for the continued popularity of Christopher Reeve’s portrayal was the commitment he gave to the character irrespective of whether he was saving Lois from falling to[…]
O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us! – Robert Burns, “To a Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet At Church.” * *[…]
Counterculture · Essays · SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming
“I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment – that of looking down within the tarn – had been to deepen the first singular impression. There[…]
Today, Cukor’s musical version is regarded as a classic, and, due to Garland’s spectacular comeback performance, it has even eclipsed the original. Yet I prefer the 1937 version, primarily because[…]
In the same way that the heptapod language permits Louise to grasp the warp and weft of her world, the form of the heptapods taps into the once fringe and now venerable[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries
The response to Weiner shows us (yet again) that the greater the access to a subject, the more likely a documentary is to be lavishly praised . . . no[…]
Biopic · Directors · Writers & Critics
Rather than trying to frame the narrative as a means of truly understanding the mind of its subject, the film emphasizes that the central figure himself controls access to his[…]
Activist & Political · Actors & Personalities · LGBT & Queer
Isn’t it the job of an actor to play what he or she is not? * * * It was Jeffrey Tambor who got me thinking about authenticity in acting.[…]
Almost as if stolen from the time of the usual commitments of any working person engaged with the world, these images breathe a second, more intimate, rhythm into Paterson and[…]
“Through the infinite reaches of space, the problems of man seem trivial and naïve indeed, and man existing alone seems himself an episode of little consequence … The Earth will[…]
