Sonny says that now that he has completed the mission for which he was created – to kill Dr. Lanning – he does not know what to do with himself,[…]
Spielberg, like many film directors, appears to be far more interested in film than life – interested in film, and interested in audiences, and how to move them through film.[…]
Essays · Experimental & Underground · SF & Fantasy · Writers & Critics
These things never happen but are always. – Sallust The dead love the most, love the longest. – Malvina von Stille * * * INTRODUCTORY Centuries of thought and imagination,[…]
Historical & Epic · SF & Fantasy
Critics and fans love the film, but complain that it is less “mythic” than its predecessors. The myth is still there; it is just harder to see because it is[…]
The marriage of Disney and Lucasfilm is a match made in heaven. Disney – the man and the company – spent the better part of a century trying to homogenize[…]
“Ava was a rat in a maze, and I gave her one way out. To escape, she’d have to use self-awareness, imagination, manipulation, sexuality, empathy, and she did.” * *[…]
SF & Fantasy · Thrillers & Action
The movie makes a half-hearted attempt at chastising contemporary society and its dependence on technology, on machines (ironically, Sarah would not have survived without the help of a machine). Everyone[…]
The dominant image from Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013) is that of an opaque pool of black liquid, into which sink a variety of men who have fallen victim[…]
Once a film gives up on originality, it immediately descends into nihilism. Whatever sensory pleasures such a film may offer, the underlying assumption is that the entire experience is empty[…]
In a dehumanised world it is therefore the replicants who are keener to live, love, and be free. This is another important issue that the film raises: who is actually[…]
So even if you aren’t nostalgic for the heady sense of danger and decadence, do yourself a favor and crash the pod down into Carpenter country – an alternate reality[…]
Essays · New Media · SF & Fantasy · Writers & Critics
“What Jonze, Coover, and Švankmajer are all playing with in their distinctive, varying shades of dark humor are the dual perspectives of the Spielbergian audience, absorbed in the protagonists’ fantasies,[…]
Activist & Political · Essays · Horror · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part,[…]
“What if the birds’ extreme proximity to human beings and, particularly to Melanie, bespeaks not conflict but fascination, admiration, and – I shall just go ahead and say it –[…]
This interview with Ray Harryhausen first appeared in Bright Lights in November 2007. We reprint it here as a birthday tribute to the seminal animator. * * * “I wrecked Washington, and[…]
With the latest version of Godzilla opening on May 16, we were reminded of other 1950s drive-in “classics” featuring everything from irradiated giant bugs to women on other planets who look suspiciously[…]
Activist & Political · SF & Fantasy
Avatar metaphorically attacks all martial, colonial, and expansionist histories, which have occurred at the expense of the world’s indigenous peoples and Earth’s biocomplexity. Both implicitly, through the film’s narrative, and[…]
Now anyone who can scrape together a few hundred dollars can load up on enough movie streams and DV-R and giant LCD screens to never leave the house, so who needs a nice house?
Though last December’s lack of promised Mayan doomsday never panned out, December 2013 is laden with new DVDs and theatrical revivals that allow us to pretend the world ended as far back as 1979. Oh if only… we might all be rolling with Humongous by now, or Bane, or what’s the difference?
“Yes, there are things that disappoint about Elysium. But there is also much to relish about Blomkamp’s still-developing wit and vision, especially his parodic assumptions about future dominant languages and ethnicities.”
