Flashback: See L.A. Confidential Again . . . the First Time
This review of L.A. Confidential first appeared in Bright Lights in May 1998. We’ve always been fond of this piece, and are happy to repost it now, not least because[…]
Category: Movies
A Family Affair: Brooklyn’s BAMcinemaFest (June 18-29, 2014)
“Based on the sample of crowdfunded films at BAM, “public” funding in a country where public, government funding for arts is rapidly diminishing and has long since paled in comparison[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Horror · Reviews
The Devils (the Angels): Sympathy for John Landis
“I can always make something work, if I have a camera.” – John Landis There are two John Landises. There’s the director equally at home with comedy as he is[…]
Activist & Political · Reviews
Divide(d) and Conquer(ed): Notes on Income Inequality in Late-20th- and Early-21st-Century Cinema
“As the divide between rich and poor became more extreme, late 20th-century cinema required a new approach to achieve the same end: portraying the existence of the wealthy elite as[…]
A Brutal Nobility: Painting Death in The House with Laughing Windows (Pupi Avati, 1976)
“Inherent to defamiliarization or riddling is, of course, a process of refamiliarization: as the film proceeds, we wish to see the strange normalized, the riddle answered. But in The House with Laughing[…]
Going to Extremes #4: The Tempest (Oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go)
“While I get Sam Goldwyn’s point about messages and Western Union, I think Shakespeare is always sending the same one: to overcome our worst weaknesses, first we must see them[…]
A Boy and His Bird: Coming of Age with Kes (1969)
With such recent releases as The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and The Spectacular Now (2013), there continues to be no shortage of movies about young[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews · TV & Streaming · Westerns
Happy Birthday, Richard Boone! Got Trouble? Wire Paladin! The Western for Existentialists
Today is actor Richard Boone’s birthday (June 18, 1917 – January 10, 1981). We’re celebrating it by reprinting Alan Vanneman’s pithy write-up (previously published in issue 48, May 2005) of[…]
The Dream Behind the Reality: Amiable Lunacy and Blithe Brutality in Harvey
“What befalls Veta can perhaps be justified as part of the film’s critique of psychiatry; after all, her unfortunate experience mocks the short-sightedness and arbitrary operation of the mental health[…]
Going to Extremes #3: The Winter’s Tale (Danger: Twin Souls at Work)
“Everything goes on in the mind of a man who, nominally at least, has absolute power at court and who, until a few moments before, felt secure in the mutual[…]
There Goes the Neighborhood: Godzilla and the Gentrification of Pulp
“Godzilla has no anarchy or eccentricity, much less any experimental spirit or Japanese weirdness. Edwards is too preoccupied with turning the movie into something new, serious, and, worst of all,[…]
Three Masters: Spielberg, Anderson, Haneke, and Their Audience
Is the filmmaker tyrant, aesthete, ringmaster, or hermit? For whom does an artist create? It is a question frequently put, perhaps more to writers than to others, and perhaps the[…]
Godzilla #1: Godzilla ex Machina: Taking All the Fight out of Humanity
“If Godzilla is not benevolent but merely indifferent, then his mercy amounts to that of a man sidestepping an anthill instead of trampling it under his heel.” Conventional academic and[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
The American Epidemic: AIDS in (Recent) Cinema and History
Discussed in this essay: The Battle of AmFar (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, 2013); Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2013); How to Survive a Plague (David France, 2012); The Normal[…]
Activist & Political · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
“Politics Is Theatre”: On Narimane Mari’s Bloody Beans (Loubia Hamra) (2014)
“It’s not blood, it’s red” – Jean-Luc Godard A few weeks ago Abdelaziz Bouteflika was re-elected for a fourth time as president of Algeria with 81.5% of the vote. Most[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews · Writers & Critics
Could You Spare Me a Nightmare? The World of Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962)
In honor of Vincent Price’s birthday (May 27, 1911-October 25, 1993), we present Sean Nortz’s thrilling exegesis of one of the actor’s most intriguing and downright bizarre films. (After this piece[…]
Animation · Historical & Epic · Reviews
Private Snafu’s Hidden War: Historical Survey and Analytical Perspective
In honor of Memorial Day, we present Christopher Dow’s lively history and critical analysis of World War II’s favorite cartoon fuck-up, Private Snafu, which appeared originally in Bright Lights in[…]
John Krokidas’ Kill Your Darlings: An Origin Story of the Beats
“[Jack] Kerouac declared in his preface to Galloway that the young artist ‘is colored by his symbols. His hue is vivid: he postures.’ This because the artist is in growth,[…]
Private (and Public) Traps: Truman Burbank’s Audiences in The Truman Show
“Are we trapped like Truman? Is this why we want him to leave his world? Then what will we do? Turn off the set? Leave our society with its endless[…]
Gay Old San Francisco: Hitchcock’s Closet Case and Other Thoughts on Vertigo
“Could Scottie’s real beau ideal be Gavin Elster?” Vertigo is famously about obsession. Brian Da Palma’s homage/rip-off is even called Obsession. But what is Scottie’s obsession, really? San Francisco’s past[…]
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