Tragic Poignancy: Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Loyal 47 Ronin
The great director’s legendary version of Chushingura is finally available in a sparkling DVD transfer Genroku Chushingura, also known as The Forty-Seven Ronin of the Genroku Era, or in the[…]
Category: Movies
Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin’s Little Fugitive Escapes to DVD
A breakthrough indie and a crash course in no-budget film production Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin’s groundbreaking 1953 indie, Little Fugitive (reviewed more extensively elsewhere in Bright Lights, along with[…]
Antonioni’s Red Desert
The Italian maestro’s stroll through the modern wasteland Red Desert occupies a curious place in Antonioni’s canon. Made in 1964 as a French-Italian coproduction, it’s wedged between the international success[…]
Mario Bava’s Baron Blood on DVD
This middle-range Bava looks better than ever on DVD Baron Blood (original title Orrori del castello di Norimberga, Gli) is often written off as middle-range Bava at best, and with[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Radley Metzger: The Dirty Girls, Carmen Baby, The Princess and the Call Girl on DVD
Will Metzger mania never end? Image Entertainment’s ambitious program of releasing what appears to be just about every Radley Metzger film is a feast for completists and fans of the[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Maverick Metzger: Dark Odyssey and Little Mother
Radley Metzger’s first film and his veiled biopic of saintly slut Evita now on DVD. Radley Metzger’s fame rests largely on having brought sophistication to softcore porn in films like[…]
Lonesome Leni: The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl
Hitler’s hired hand and master filmmaker Riefenstahl is indeed both wonderful and horrible in Ray Muller’s 1993 documentary. Ray Müller’s monumental (3 hours-plus) The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl[…]
Music & Musicals · Pre-Code · Reviews
Pre-Code Follies: Murder at the Vanities
This 1934 musical mystery has girls, grins, guns, and Duke Ellington, too “Through these portals pass the most beautiful girls in the world.” That was the legend above the entrance[…]
Forgotten and Fantastic: The King of Jazz
Hot licks and high kicks in a rare early musical The King of Jazz is a time machine. This 1929 musical, filmed in Technicolor, preserves a part of America’s musical[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Ask, Tell: Documentaries in the 1999 San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
Gendernauts, military drag queens, communist queers – and, oh yes, John Waters distinguish this year’s docs. Those who make them and those who follow them have long lamented the lack[…]
Empty Closets: The 1999 San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
For the SFILGFF, this is the year of the closet – empty! The proportion of successes to stinkers is reassuringly high in this year’s San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay[…]
Directors · Interviews · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Ellen Cabot – no, Victoria Sloan -, no, David DeCoteau Speaks!
The auteur of Petticoat Planet and Retro-Puppetmaster discusses his the kinky leatherboy arthouse epic Leather Jacket Love Story and other things How much did Leather Jacket Love Story (1998) cost?[…]
A Realm of Pure Feeling: Defying Gravity (1997)
This sweet film about queer fratboys in love defies the odds, too. Summer is when the studios unleash their biggest potential moneymakers, which this year have also turned out to[…]
Relax . . . It’s Just Sex (1999)
Relax . . . it’s just a movie – and a good one thanks to a sharp script and Jennifer Tilly * * * Relax . . . It’s Just[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
Compulslve Repetitions: Short Works by Martin Arnold
The pleasures and terrors of Old Hollywood from a master manipulator Movies have so much in common with dreams that one of Hollywood’s most enduring nicknames has been “the dream[…]
Experimental & Underground · Reviews · Uncategorized
Decamping with Andy: Outer and Inner Space, Screen Test, Hedy, Horse
What do Edie Sedgwick, Hedy Lamarr, Mary Woronov, and a pack of queer cowpokes have in common? Andy Warhol, natch. The Whitney Museum and New York MOMA’s restoration of Andy[…]
Three Homo Classics on DVD: Sex Is . . ., A Very Natural Thing, To Play or to Die
Three historic gay movies from Water Bearer Films It was inevitable that the DVD market would move beyond the blockbusters and so-called reference disks (those mindless actioners like Armageddon whose[…]
Edge of Seventeen (1999): Coming of Age and Coming Out in the Glamorous ’80s
Teenage coming-of-age romantic comedies were once exclusively hetero terrain. Homophobic Hollywood couldn’t conceive of a queer Pretty in Pink during the 1980s, when John Hughes reigned supreme at the box[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Four Metzger Classics on DVD: Therese and Isabelle; Camille 2000; The Lickerish Quartet; Score
Metzger madness begins in earnest with the release of four of his best on DVD “Art” has long functioned as a code word for erotica in certain contexts. Phrases like[…]
Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Of Loincloths and Lamé: “Sons of Hercules” at the 1999 SFILGFF
These mincing musclequeens might as well be Hercules’ daughters! Among the 1999 San Francisco Lesbian & Gay Film Festival’s dog-and-pony shows, Sons of Hercules promises to be one of the[…]
Links + BSA
