Bright Lights Film Journal

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Reviews · SF & Fantasy

3

Post-Sensory Pong: A Future-Shock Analysis of Virginia Postrel’s “Who Needs Raise When you have TV?”

  • December 17, 2013

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?

Reviews · SF & Fantasy

0

Future-Pissed: THE VISITOR (1979), AKIRA (1988), TANK GIRL (1995)

  • December 4, 2013

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?

Actors & Personalities · Directors · Reviews

1

Clint, Caught in the Act: On The Beguiled, and Don Siegel’s Leading Man

  • November 25, 2013

“While the premise of an injured soldier recuperating in a house full of smitten women seems ripe for male-fantasy debasement, the film is deeply interested in the psyches of its[…]

Interviews

0

Beyond Borders: Talking with Filmmaker Eyas Salman

  • November 25, 2013

“Salman says he identifies as a Palestinian, but does not feel a sense of nationalism. His is not the generation that still holds onto house keys and deeds to property[…]

Festivals & Awards

0

Bridging the Popular/Arthouse Divide: The Kinotavr Film Festival (2013)

  • November 24, 2013

“This year’s Kinotavr didn’t suggest a Russian film industry in meltdown even though some of the expected highlights were to prove deeply disappointing. On the other hand, there were pleasant[…]

DVD & Blu-ray

0

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Foolish Wives (von Stroheim), Here, Then (Mao Mao), Red River (Hawks), The Big Parade (Vidor)

  • November 24, 2013

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim, 1922) Reading that the initial cut of Foolish Wives ran[…]

Crime · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews

0

The Di Blasio Grime Revival: Ms. 45 (1981), Little Nicky (2000)

  • November 23, 2013

This is a film from the era of Bernhard Goetz, Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels, and of course, Charles Bronson finding himself facing muggers wherever he may go.

Horror · Reviews

0

The Horror of Origins: In Ron Honthaner’s The House on Skull Mountain

  • November 13, 2013

“This emergent form — the death’s head — is not a part of the scene, but rather a reflection upon it, potentially a visualization of the character’s thoughts — evoked[…]

Crime · Reviews

2

Children of Violence: Studies show PG-13 more violent than R

  • November 12, 2013

“Studies like this misunderstand the basic use of cinematic myth (which includes action films) as a ceremonial exercise in psychic catharsis, meant to appease the angry darkness of the masculine unconscious.

DVD & Blu-ray · Reviews

3

La Notte (1961) on Criterion Blu-ray (review), scattered like coffin lid coasters on a golf course coffee table

  • November 5, 2013

“a La Notte blu-ray. And now it all makes sense, the rust is a poem, the vast stretches of party space and elaborate mirror reflections are so haunting and perfectly evoked you can smell the cigarette smoke, the grass, the chlorine, and cologne, all fusing into one empty gaze of a breeze. “

Animation

0

Abnormal Intelligence: Sam Fell and Chris Butler’s ParaNorman

  • November 1, 2013

“The zombies, horrified by the overwhelming stimuli of television and set upon by hordes of trigger-happy rednecks and torch-wielding schoolteachers, are one of the film’s many desperate victims of bullying[…]

Experimental & Underground

0

Roadside Wastrels: Notes on Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop

  • November 1, 2013

“What is this anyway? Some kind of masculine power trip? I’m shoved in the back with all the goddamn tools. Screwdrivers and wrenches don’t really do it for me, you[…]

Reviews

0

Enfeebling Fables: Weak Allegory in Les Carabiniers and The Silence

  • October 31, 2013

“If Godard reveals what Benjamin calls ‘the beauty’ of recognizing that twentieth-century art has to become more than a parable, Bergman offers a vision of ‘the misery’: the desperate, impossible effort to find some kind of truth in a text that offers only transmissibility.”

Essays · LGBT & Queer

0

Structural/Sexual Transgression: Todd Haynes’ Poison as a Critique of Homonormativity

  • October 31, 2013

“In the Washington Times I was called ‘the Fellini of Fellatio’ — a proud moment!” —Todd Haynes, “From Underground to Multiplex”

Satin Rouge

Essays

0

The Wanking Widow and Other Indecorous Dames: Three Films about Maternal Transgression and the “Fortunate Fall”

  • October 31, 2013

“Popular culture feels compelled to interrogate the ‘barren’ years, in some cases expressed as a contradiction between competing life goals: the other-oriented value of maternal self-sacrifice and the inner-oriented value of following one’s bliss. The aging mother should, in theory, be free to indulge her desires. When desire runs afoul of ‘age appropriate’ codes of conduct, however, the positive goal of self-actualization can take a nasty detour.”

Asian · Reviews

0

Existential Lethargy: Hong Sang-soo’s Nobody’s Daughter Haewon (2013)

  • October 31, 2013

“Jung Eun-chae is a graceful, beautiful Haewon, but her daydreams seem facile, and the backpack she wears for most of the movie — which seems to be empty — tempers this statuesque gracefulness, rendering Haewon an awkward sightseer or a precocious child on a first-time school trip.”

Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up

Comedy · Directors · Essays · Writers & Critics

0

Team Apatow and the Tropes of Geek-Centered Romantic Comedy

  • October 31, 2013

“Nowadays, schlubs play schlubs and audiences are expected to accept that geeky males can win over classically beautiful women. What does it tell us about the state of gender relations, sexual fantasy, and desire that a physically average geek like Seth Rogen can trump an iconically attractive and glamorous star like Cary Grant?”

Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly in It's Always Fair Weather

Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals

0

It’s Always Fair Weather? I’m Afraid Not: Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse Say Good-bye to Broadway

  • October 31, 2013

What’s black and white and destroys Western Civilization?

Gravity

Reviews

0

Buried Alive in Space: The Non-Story of Gravity

  • October 31, 2013

“As the camera constantly spins with the characters, as one might get motion sickness, we may realize that the film really is about nothing. And it does not matter.”

Ziyi Zhang and Tony Leung in The Grandmaster

Asian · Reviews · Uncategorized

0

Poetry as Motion: Taking a Closer Look at Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster

  • October 31, 2013

“Now the fight becomes something more than a contest of wills, it becomes a careful discovery of kindred spirits as seen through a reciprocal poetry of martial arts form.”

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