Bright Lights Film Journal

  • TwitterTwitter
  • FacebookFacebook
  • InstagramInstagram
  • Google+Google+
  • RSSRSS
  • About
    • Staff
    • History
    • Contact
    • Advertise with BLFJ
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Banned Words
    • BLFJ News
    • Issue Archive
  • Artists
    • Actors & Personalities
    • Cinematographers
    • Composers
    • Directors
    • Editors
    • Interviews
    • Visual Artists
    • Writers & Critics
  • Movies
    • DVD & Blu-ray
    • Festivals & Awards
    • Lists
    • Reviews
    • Photo Essays
  • Genres
    • Activist & Political
    • Animation
    • Asian
    • Avant Garde & Underground
    • Crime
    • Documentaries
    • Erotica & Exploitation
    • Historical & Epic
    • Horror
    • LGBT & Queer
    • Music & Musicals
    • Noir
    • Pre-Code
    • SF & Fantasy
    • Silents
    • Westerns
  • TV & Streaming
  • Books
  • Contributors
  • Subscribe
  • Ads
    • Most Popular

      All time

    • Black Lives Matter: Whitewashing the Amanda Knox Story in the Netflix Documentary

      49 Comments

    • The Last Airbender: The Most (Incomplete) Fantastic Journey

      30 Comments

    • Latest Stories

      What is new?

    • When Platonic Love Turns Into Body Horror: Exploring Michael Shanks’s Together (2025)

      July 25, 2026

    • Anyone Miss Movies That Made People Vomit? Schindler’s Watch List

      July 21, 2026

    • Comments

      Most Recent

    • Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto LXII – gordsellar.com on:

      A Film Divided Against Itself: D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915)

    • The Esteemed Black Actresses Who Finally Have the Spotlight – The New York Times – Celebrity News on:

      Books: Best Actress: The History of Oscar-Winning Women by Stephen Tapert

Sixth Generation

Activist & Political · Asian · Drama · Societal Trends

0

Melting into Air: The Late Hu Bo and the (Enduring) Sixth Generation

  • June 4, 2020

Hu Bo leaves us suspended over this bleak interregnum – where the old has gone but the new is not yet born. His death too, leaves a similar blank spot.[…]

Hidden Life

Designers · Interviews · Production History

0

Talking with Production Designer Sebastian Krawinkel about Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life

  • June 1, 2020

It wasn’t always that simple for the shooting unit to improvise with A Hidden Life being a period film, but nevertheless Terry would wander off sets with the actors and[…]

Psycho

Comedy · Crime · Drama

0

Psycho as Comedy: The Joke’s on Everyone

  • May 28, 2020

We can further associate the filmmaker, the man with whom we’ve placed our narrative trust, with the “psycho” of both the title and our typical image of one, the latter[…]

little mermaid

Animation · Essays · Women in Film

0

Girls Just Wanna Be Fish: The Little Mermaid and Curious Young Women

  • May 25, 2020

Author’s note: My primary works cited, in increasingly tangled order, are the 1989 Disney adaptation of The Little Mermaid; Hayao Miyazaki’s 2008 Studio Ghibli film Ponyo; and the ur-terror that[…]

Oberhausen

Experimental & Underground · Festivals & Awards

0

Rose Is a Rose: The 2020 International Short Film Festival Oberhausen

  • May 22, 2020

Watching as a FIPRESCI festival juror from Australia, at all hours of night and day, I was overwhelmed by the breadth of the international program, with its dizzying, often undifferentiated,[…]

It Follows

Activist & Political · Disease and Epidemics · Economy · Horror · Pandemic

0

“Don’t Let It Touch You”: Watching It Follows in the Age of Coronavirus

  • May 18, 2020

What the decade’s scariest film can tell us about pandemics, poverty, and the web of financial risk that ensnares us all * * * It comes for you when you’re[…]

Actors & Personalities · Interviews

0

Happy Birthday, James Mason (b. 5/15/1909): Odd Man Out

  • May 15, 2020

Mason was “equally at home playing small, brooding anti-heroes, camping it up in a toga, or doing a nice line in late career self-parody.”

The Thing

Horror · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy

0

The Thing about The Thing and Some Other Things

  • May 11, 2020

It’s your thing, do what you wanna do, I can’t tell you who to sock it to. – Isley Brothers What in the thing is thingly? What is the thing[…]

Drama · Melodrama · Pre-Code · Romance · War

0

Love Stories in Harrowing Times: On Waterloo Bridge (1931) and Little Man, What Now? (1934)

  • May 2, 2020

James Whale’s Waterloo Bridge (1931) and Frank Borzage’s Little Man, What Now? (1934) depict human possibility in terms of what can transpire between two ordinary people, while holding out little[…]

Jackass 3D

Comedy · Film Technology & History · Franchises & Series · Theory

0

The Phenomenology of the Grotesque: Jackass 3D’s Cinema of Stereoscopic Attractions

  • April 29, 2020

Stereoscopic experience, therefore, drastically alters the positioning of the viewer in relation to diegetic content, creating the illusion that the body of the spectator is immersed within the screen planes[…]

Faulkner

Hollywood · Literature and Film · Production History · Writers & Critics

0

The Cinematic Faulkner: Framing Hollywood

  • April 22, 2020

“The Cinematic Faulkner” includes excerpts from The Life of William Faulkner, Volume 1: The Past Is Never Dead 1897-1934 (March 2020) and Volume 2: This Alarming Paradox 1935-1962 (September 2020), with the permission of the University[…]

Assistant

Drama · Women in Film · Workplace

0

Silence and the Loss of Self: On Kitty Green’s The Assistant (2019)

  • April 19, 2020

The dull humdrum of the office takes on a kind of bizarre poetry: you find yourself humming along to the copier, placing kitchen objects in patterned formations, making slightly stranger,[…]

Solyaris

Drama · Literature and Film · Russia · SF & Fantasy

0

Intimately Alien: Conflicting Ideologies in Solyaris (1968) and Solaris (1972)

  • April 16, 2020

While there can be no doubt Solyaris is no artistic masterpiece, the idea that it isn’t a product of its time is more complicated. To the extent that the film[…]

Oscar Actress

Actors & Personalities · Books

1

Books: Best Actress: The History of Oscar-Winning Women by Stephen Tapert

  • April 13, 2020

Big picture book is a fun peruse for cineastes  * * * Stephen Tapert’s Best Actress: The History of Oscar-Winning Women (2020, Rutgers University Press, 504 pages) is a coffee[…]

Corona

Activist & Political · Medical · Pandemic

0

Surviving: A Four-Film Guide to Outlasting Quarantine and Changing the Post-Corona World

  • April 9, 2020

Amid senators dumping stock while lying to the public about the true danger of the virus, rumors of Trump seeking to profit from a potential COVID-19 vaccine, the farce of[…]

Contagion

Activist & Political · Disease and Epidemics

0

Contagion (2011) in a Time of Contagion

  • April 5, 2020

The virus, on screen and off, spreads at a rate that outpaces the economy. Marx would not be surprised that Trump is calling for a return to work since workers[…]

Doris Day

Actors & Personalities

9

Not the Girl Next Door: Doris Day Reconsidered (Happy 98th Birthday)

  • April 3, 2020

We’ve reposted this piece before because, really, can there ever be enough Doris? Her talent, humor, and joie de vivre are a tonic in a world increasingly locked down and[…]

cat killer

Commentary · Crime · Documentaries · New Media

0

The Audience of Antagonism: Mark Lewis’ Don’t F**k With Cats

  • March 30, 2020

“We are not so much a society where nobody knows anybody as we are a society where only media celebrities are considered to have actual existence.”        –[…]

Scissorhands

Drama · SF & Fantasy

1

I Won’t Hurt You: Edward Scissorhands’ Lessons in Compassion

  • March 25, 2020

Edward is never really accepted for who he is by those around him, the persecution he is subjected to the result of a communal, warped worldview and individual biases, ranging[…]

Portrait of Lady on Fire

Artists · Drama · Essays

0

Portrait without a Face: Faces and Facelessness in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire

  • March 20, 2020

With Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma offers us an unexpectedly timely commentary on our present moment of social distancing, self-quarantines, and curfews. This film about cooped-up lovers,[…]

  • « Previous Page
  • Next Page »
  • Links + BSA

    ProjectorScreen.com
    Shop ProjectorScreen.com for the best projectors and projector screens.
    YouTube to MP3
    Wholesale Home Audio Video
    • Weird Band Names
    • How to write a script for a TV show PDF
    • Marketing Enablement
      • TwitterTwitter
      • FacebookFacebook
      • InstagramInstagram
      • Google+Google+
      • RSSRSS

      © 2020 Bright Lights Film Journal | brightlightsfilm.com
      Online since 1996 | ISSN: 0147-4049
      a Studio Hyperset expression · Design by Irina Beffa · Theme Art by Jim McDermott
      Privacy