Bright Lights Film Journal

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Baltic cinema

Eastern European · Festivals & Awards

0

Ready for the Close-up: Filmmaking Then and Now in the Baltic States

  • November 6, 2019

Note: We’re publishing this to coincide with New York’s Scandinavia House’s important second festival devoted to Baltic cinema.  * * * Introduction The second New York Baltic Film Festival will[…]

Bob Ted Carol Alice

Comedy · Counterculture · Drama · Sex & Relationships

0

Who Carries the Banner? Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice 50 Years Later

  • November 3, 2019

Concepts of sex and marriage have changed monumentally in the last few decades and still today prove endlessly malleable and undefinable. We spend our whole lives attempting to shape our[…]

Shyamalan

Drama · New Media · Philosophy

0

Videograms of a Revolution: Surveillance, Self-Regulation, and Techno-Progressivism in M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass (2019)

  • October 30, 2019

[This review contains spoilers for the films Glass and The Village.]   “There are unknown forces that don’t want us to realise what we are truly capable of. They don’t[…]

Dear Ex

Asian · Drama · LGBT & Queer

0

“This Film Is Blessed by the Gods”: Talking with Mag Hsu, Director of Dear Ex (Netflix, 2018)

  • October 25, 2019

Hsu Chih-Yen and I immediately agreed that we wanted to represent a Taipei in July, especially the sun in Taipei. Under this July sun, everything is steaming, all the colours[…]

Wizard of Oz

Essays · Historical & Epic · Memoir · SF & Fantasy

1

The Wizard of Oz at 80: Archive of a Rust Belt Girl

  • October 20, 2019

The Wizard of Oz, the film, turns 80 this year, 2019. To celebrate, we present Amy Kenyon’s striking analysis/memoir, which explores growing up a “rust belt girl” in postwar Detroit[…]

8 Million

Crime · Neo-Noir · Writers & Critics

0

8 Million Ways to Die (1986): An Autopsy of the Great L.A. Noir That Never Was

  • October 13, 2019

So what the fuck happened? * * * 8 Million Ways to Die is a mess. Not a glorious mess, or an interesting mess. It’s not a fiasco on the[…]

Drama · War

0

On the Beautiful Pain of Saying Nothing: Desire, Silence, and Visual Inheritance in Pawlikowski’s Cold War and Antonioni’s L’Eclisse

  • October 8, 2019

“We’ve avoided saying certain things. Why bring them up now?” – L’Eclisse “Two hearts, four eyes, Crying all day and all night/ Dark eyes, you cry because you can’t be[…]

Drama · Essays

0

Time and Friendship in Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, 2006), or How We Age with Film

  • October 4, 2019

The film withholds memory and history from us, always knowing more than us, plot-wise, but inviting and compelling our projection of how we fill the space of our own friendships.[…]

Melbourne International Film Festival

Festivals & Awards

0

The View on Parade: Xavier Dolan, Richard Billingham, and the Limits of Australian Cinema at the 2019 Melbourne International Film Festival (Aug. 6-23)

  • September 30, 2019

It seems a good opportunity to talk about film and nationhood, given that so many of this year’s local films – not only A Family but Alice, Buoyancy, and Animals[…]

My Man and I

Production History · Writers & Critics

0

Lost Letter: HUAC, Immigration, and William Wellman’s My Man and I (1952)

  • September 26, 2019

In My Man and I, “it seems that America has fallen into decline and the Stones and Nancy Walkers of America need the redemptive power, the cultural revivification offered by[…]

Hereditary

Directors · Horror · Theory

1

The Architecture of Horror: Space, Light, and Atmosphere in Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Midsommar

  • September 20, 2019

We encounter filmic atmosphere vaguely, imperceptibly, but emotively and reflexively; a movie is a mood. Hereditary and Midsommar creep into our consciousness through subtle shifts in light, sound, and camerawork.[…]

Sergei Bondarchuk and actress Lyudmila Savelyeva

DVD & Blu-ray · Historical & Epic · Reviews

12

“Tolstoy and Only Tolstoy. Nothing Comes from Us”: Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace (1966-67) – Criterion Update

  • September 13, 2019

“What do such large loose baggy monsters, with their queer elements of the accidental and the arbitrary, artistically mean?” – Henry James, from the preface of his novel The Tragic[…]

Fugitive Kind

Drama · Writers & Critics

1

Orpheus Unending, or Beyond and Behind The Fugitive Kind

  • September 8, 2019

For a variety of reasons, then, despite its high-gloss finish, the film did not achieve any real commercial success. This is not to say it was an artistic letdown, as[…]

Lion King

Animation

0

The Lion King (2019): The Art of De-Animation

  • September 3, 2019

These characters speak lines that contain emotion but show none of it themselves, even when they’re the exact same lines as before. And when they’re new, they show no old[…]

Ariel

Animation · LGBT & Queer · Memoir

0

Filmography of the Closet: Coming Out through The Little Mermaid

  • August 30, 2019

As a child, singing the Ariel aahs was synonymous for me with being or becoming Ariel. More than looking like her, dressing like her, acting like her – all of[…]

Black Man

African American · Cinematographers · Designers · Editors · Interviews

0

The Last Black Man in San Francisco: Talking with Production Designer Jona Tochet, Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, and Editor David Marks

  • August 26, 2019

We spent a lot of time going through references for the film as well as scouting iconic locations, but what it came down to was devoting ourselves to creating a[…]

Kirk Hammett

Horror · Interviews · Movies · SF & Fantasy

0

Metallica’s Kirk Hammett on Introducing Kids to Scary Movies, Why He Likes Lords of Chaos, and the Deal with Women and Horror

  • August 21, 2019

 * * * It’s The Day of the Triffids’ fault: when he was a wee lad stuck at home in front of the television with a sprained arm (fault: sister,[…]

Santa Fe Trail

Westerns

0

“When Words Turn into Guns”: Santa Fe Trail (1940) and Its Times

  • August 16, 2019

Martyrdom suits Brown’s purpose, and it is in this extremism that he is ultimately un-American. His cause may be morally right but his attempt to impose it is not; the[…]

Hollywood

Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Drama · Essays · Romance

0

Adios, Compañeros: Living the Dream of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

  • August 10, 2019

QT’s films are commonly hurtling toward darkness, yet Once Upon feels like a repudiation, as much as a culmination, of his oeuvre. There’s a point in the experience where the[…]

Red Badge of Courage

Literature and Film · War

0

John Huston and Stephen Crane: The Texts of Red Badge of Courage

  • August 6, 2019

Huston, unlike Crane and his readers, had the actual experience of combat before him. What he discovered in Italy validated much of what Crane wrote. Huston, too, would attempt in[…]

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