Bright Lights Film Journal

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Directors · Experimental & Underground · Film Technology & History · Interviews

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Shapes Through Time and Space: An Interview with Ken Jacobs About His Abstract 3D Film 3X3D

  • November 7, 2024

3D is used to record visual reality, but that’s where I take off to the unimaginable. We are (wonderfully) constrained by our particular physiognomy and I wouldn’t change a thing,[…]

Celebrity Culture · Comedy · Hollywood · Road Movies

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Turn Back? The Road to Ishtar

  • November 1, 2024

Road to Morocco made the National Film Registry by going to the Mojave Desert in California and using rear screen projection. It didn’t need to go to a “real” casbah.[…]

Comedy · Directors · Drama · Family

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The Edgelord Within: Todd Solondz’s Cinema of Repulsion

  • October 27, 2024

He serves up the perversions of Happiness, the meanness of Welcome to the Dollhouse, or even the self-deprecation of Fear, Anxiety and Depression in all their lowliness. The edgelord present[…]

Crime · Drama · Sex & Relationships · SF & Fantasy

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Presence Tension: The Scary of 61st

  • October 20, 2024

This leaves the provocateur director herself in her role as catalyst for the mayhem to follow as the ultimate filmic presence wreaking its influence on others. Assigned only the title[…]

Directors · Drama · DVD & Blu-ray · Westerns

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Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: Revisiting Sam Peckinpah’s Unrealized Western on Criterion

  • October 12, 2024

Action scenes are what a summer audience wants, but in Pat Garrett the shootouts become episodic and lack the ratcheting up of tension, followed by its release at the climactic[…]

Drama · French Cinema · Uncategorized · Writers & Critics

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Bresson, Schrader, and the Fool: Transcendental and Materialist Interpretations in the Films of Robert Bresson

  • October 5, 2024

I think the reason Bresson’s films resist singular interpretations is that they are composed of multiple, overlapping perspectives. His films contain elements of humanism, nihilism, absurdism, existentialism, transcendentalism, and numerous[…]

Iranian Cinema · Women in Film

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Revolutionary Women in Two Iranian Films: On The Hidden Half (2001) and The House Is Black (1963)

  • September 29, 2024

Fereshteh: Sometimes I want to put on make-up, or wear beautiful dresses, or fall in love. I don’t know why, but I feel like I’m living in a small can,[…]

Books · Directors · Women in Film · Writers & Critics

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Book Review: Carrie Courogen, Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius

  • September 24, 2024

Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius. St. Martin’s Press, 2024, 400pp., $30.00. * * * Published on the heels of Mark Harris’s[…]

Crime · Noir · Photo Essays

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Barflies and Hot Lies: The Fifties B-Girl and Fritz Lang’s Subversive Politics in The Big Heat

  • September 18, 2024

Debby refuses to be a passive victim of Vince Stone’s violence, fighting back and branding his face with boiling coffee as revenge. But while she’s no helpless victim, Lang’s ending[…]

Crime · Drama · Neo-Noir · Women in Film

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“Oh, look”: From Male-Wary Gaze to Objectifying Female Gaze in Gone Girl

  • September 6, 2024

“Oh, look. He’s being a good guy, so everybody can see him being a good guy.” – Officer James Gilpin observing Nick Dunne in Gone Girl (2014) There are many[…]

Crime · Politics

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To Live and Die in LA (1985) and the Thrill-Seeking Wasteland of Reagan’s America

  • August 31, 2024

However, while other filmmakers got caught up in the heady, cocaine rush of the 1980s, Friedkin was harder to convince. When we dig a little deeper into his Los Angeles,[…]

Drama · Politics · Thrillers & Action

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The Imperial Presidency after Trump v. United States: On the 30th Anniversary of Clear and Present Danger

  • August 25, 2024

On its 30th anniversary, it also feels remarkably relevant in the wake of the recent Supreme Court ruling that presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for exercising “core” executive[…]

Directors · Experimental & Underground · Exploitation & Erotica · Franchises & Series · Horror · Indies · Women in Film

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Spectacles of Property and Perversion: Todd Jason Cook and the Lisa’s Nightmares Series

  • August 18, 2024

Just as his characters presume safety and security in their home space, so too does his audience approach each title with a sense of comfort through repeat exposures. The unseating[…]

Activist & Political · Class System · Crime · Essays · Franchises & Series · Myth and Archetype · Outsiders · Politics · SF & Fantasy · Societal Trends · Superheroes

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Don’t Be Weird: Heroes, Villains, and the Reinforcement of Class Distinctions in Modern Blockbusters

  • August 11, 2024

If you want to make a popular blockbuster, it better be about the right kind of person – and the right kind of person isn’t a loser. A decade ago,[…]

Comedy · Drama · Interviews · Picaresque · Producers & Studios

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The Sweet East’s Online Odyssey: In Conversation with Palme d’Or-Winning Producer Alex Coco

  • August 3, 2024

A conversation with Palme d’Or-winning producer Alex Coco * * * In Sean Price William’s The Sweet East, we are told “Everything Will Happen,” which may be a warning to[…]

Crime · Noir

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Murder by Contract: The Same as Any Business

  • July 26, 2024

The film is intent on the present, an element of the fifties go-getter types and the emergence of the organization man. The stress on “man” comes during post-World War II[…]

Horror · Indies · Mental Illness · Sex & Relationships · SF & Fantasy

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Beauty, Violence, Boredom: Santa Sangre (Jodorowsky, 1989)

  • July 20, 2024

It is not that there is something wrong with Jodorowsky’s perseveration on sex and violence per se; it is that he is not saying anything about it. It is an[…]

Exploitation & Erotica · Mondo Culture · SF & Fantasy · Superheroes · Thrillers & Action

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Gay E.T., Muslim Dracula, Kung Fu Star Wars: An Overview of Turksploitation

  • July 13, 2024

Turkish exploitation movies are one of the most elusive gold mines of film history. * * * Currently, no exclusive history of Turksploitation cinema exists in print. The most exhaustive[…]

Counterculture · Indies · LGBT & Queer · Sex & Relationships

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Hustler White (1996): Fashion, Fetish, and the Radical Potential of Pornography

  • July 6, 2024

Portrait of Rick Castro by Nadine Dinter, used with permission of the photographer   Rick Castro talks to Tony Conn about his film Hustler White, his varied career, and his[…]

Drama · LGBT & Queer

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Good Grief: Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers

  • June 30, 2024

“Solving” the film’s psychological mysteries – understanding how Adam’s ghosts arise from his grief – is the film’s central interpretive demand, and one of its pleasures. It’s the film’s conclusion[…]

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