Watch It Again! King Kong (Merian C. Cooper, 1933)
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[…]
Category: Genres
Crime · Drama · Thrillers & Action
Watch It Again! The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Sweden, 2009)
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
Tabula Rasa with Tits: Barbie Nation, a Documentary (Happy Birthday, Barbie!)
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[…]
Superman v Objectivism: Forget Lex Luthor and Brainiac; Could Ayn Rand Be Superman’s Biggest Enemy?
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[…]
How to Kill the Queen of the Night: Tragedy Is No Joke, but It Can Be Deeply Funny
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
The Machine and Beyond: Male Hysteria in The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and Others
“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[…]
Eighty Years of A Star Is Born: An Actress Evaluates a Classic
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[…]
The Enigma of Arrival: Time-Traveling from Lovecraft to La Jetée
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 Problem of Access: Weiner (2016) and the Limitations of the Fly-on-the-Wall Documentary
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
“Narrative is dead. We’re mourning it.” Intertextuality and Authorship in Abel Ferrara’s Pasolini (2014)
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
Get Real: How Much Reality Do We Want in Acting?
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.[…]
All the Small Things: Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson
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[…]
“You’ve Gotta Do Something”: Cosmic Mobility and the Future of Mankind in Rebel Without a Cause
“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[…]
La La Land and Dreams of a Musical Renaissance
There is some originality in this orgy of borrowing, with easy references to touch screens, cell phones, and an interracial marriage, but all with a constant backward orientation. La La[…]
Jerry Lewis and the Gender of Work
The gender of work in the work films is a spectrum that includes both the neutered worker of The Bellboy and The Errand Boy and the feminized worker of Cinderfella,[…]
Biopic · Historical & Epic · War
“What a Fine Ruin It’ll Make!”: John Ford’s The Long Gray Line (1954)
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[…]
In Search of Lost Time: A Review of Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women
The whole film can be viewed as a consciousness-raising of sorts. While even new-wave French auteurs fall into predictable madeleine-inspired memory spirals riffing on (not to put too fine a point[…]
Activist & Political · Biopic · Essays
The Cowboy’s Final Act: On Clint Eastwood, Trump, American Sniper, and Sully
These films aren’t merely exercises in cinematic glorification – like Clint Eastwood’s speech, they are a part of a uniquely American myth-making process, posing straw-man moral tests for their protagonists[…]
Activist & Political · Animation
The Hole in Moana’s Heart
What the movie gets wrong is at the story’s heart: not the goddess Te Fiti’s, but the human heart. People, not gods, were the cause of environmental devastation on Pacific[…]
What Makes Them So Successful? A Look into the Philosophy Behind the Coens’ Filmography
The truth is that they tend toward philosophical absurdism, rather than nihilism, and this perspective is what either makes or breaks their film in terms of commercial appeal. The draw,[…]
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