Bright Lights Film Journal

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Joker

Horror · Mental Illness · Superheroes · Urban Conflict

0

Hollywood Art Flick: Joker as Social Commentary, an Origin Story

  • August 1, 2023

Joker is the “underman” we get when God and Superman have been killed and we still don’t know how to navigate our lives without them. He’s our secular Antichrist –[…]

Nanook of the North

Documentaries · Ethnographic · Indigenous

0

Captivating and Captive: Hunting and Taxidermy as Liminal Control in Nanook of the North

  • July 22, 2023

As a hunter, Nanook does more than simply violently kill animals. He is depicted as a master of his environment, forcing it (and the animals he hunts) to conform to[…]

Richland documentary

Documentaries · Native Americans · War

0

Documentary Dispatch Tribeca: Irene Lusztig’s Richland

  • July 17, 2023

Thankfully, Lusztig resists the temptation to make old film segments salacious. There are no blooming mushroom clouds, no charred devastation. Richand is a movie about a small town with a[…]

The Gullspang Miracle

Documentaries · Drama · Family

0

Documentary Dispatch Tribeca: Maria Fredriksson’s The Gullspang Miracle

  • July 12, 2023

The fourth wall is broken in the first moments of filming, and the opening scene sets up the dynamic between the filmmaker and the filmed. From there on out, Fredriksson[…]

Forbidden Zone

Absurdism · Experimental & Underground · Indies

0

Beautiful Dreamers: Lost and Found in The Forbidden Zone (1978)

  • July 6, 2023

The Forbidden Zone was made simultaneously to David Lynch’s Eraserhead, and they indicate, even from the fringes of California filmmaking, a coming zeitgeist, soundings of something that wed the violence[…]

Judith Hearne

Alcoholism · Drama

0

The “Holy Stuff” in Jack Clayton’s The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

  • July 1, 2023

What makes Judith Hearne such a compelling portrait of female alcoholism is the novel and film’s attention to the many factors that drive Judith’s drinking – the initial encouragement of[…]

Fabelmans

Directors · Drama · Family · Writers & Critics

0

Sweat the Technique: Spielberg’s Cinematic Künstlerroman, The Fabelmans, and Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

  • June 25, 2023

Right before the unnerving camping incident, Sammy has been told by his uncle Boris, who once tamed lions used in movies, that art is a dangerous undertaking and that it[…]

Elemental documentary

Activist & Political · Documentaries · Eco · Festivals & Awards

0

Documentary Dispatch: Trip Jennings’s Reimagine Wildfire (2023)

  • June 20, 2023

This film is more than a wholesale indictment of political policy. It’s peppered with real stories of loss and near-disaster told by victims, firefighters, researchers, and native peoples who are[…]

Sindhustan

Colonialism · Documentaries · India

0

Itinerant Maps: Sapna Moti Bhavnani’s Sindhustan Reimagines Partition History

  • June 13, 2023

The film reimagines mapmaking as a self-reflective and relational drawing practice manifesting in myriad narratives on the filmmaker’s skin. Bhavnani initiates a participatory process as she situates her tattooed designs[…]

Cendrillon

Fairy Tale · Silents

0

Georges Méliès’s Dancing Clocks: On Cendrillon (Cinderella), 1899

  • June 7, 2023

There is the take on Cinderella where we ask our heroine to wait out her terrible circumstances, a moral that encourages us to work all day according to the clock[…]

Quentin Tarantino

Books · Directors · Writers & Critics

0

Pulp Nonfiction: Quentin Tarantino’s Cinema Speculation

  • June 1, 2023

It would be easy – and fun – to focus entirely on the good and to co-sign his [Tarantino’s] praise for films that are also favorites of mine such as[…]

Jordan Peele Nope

African American · Animals · Drama · Hollywood · Surrealism

0

The Power of the Look: On Jordan Peele’s Nope

  • May 26, 2023

In this instance, the look is also a threat to those doing the looking. The act of seeing can be damaging not only to the target but also to the[…]

Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Drama · LGBT & Queer · Men & Masculinity · Westerns

0

Brotherly Love: The Fraternal Love Triangles of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

  • May 20, 2023

Though the possible motivations behind Ford’s deep admiration for James have been a topic of debate since the film’s release, little attention, unfortunately, has been paid to the shared relationship[…]

Vermilion Eyes

Absurdism · DIY · Experimental & Underground · Horror

0

An Enraged Eye: Nathan Schiff’s Vermilion Eyes as Anti-Film

  • May 15, 2023

“I felt there was a dead end to the kind of films I was making. . . . I was losing sight of reason in favor of result and so[…]

The Graduate

Counterculture · Dialogue · Drama · Romance

0

Bringing Down the Establishment: The Graduate and End of the Road: A Dialogue

  • May 8, 2023

The subsequent dialogue between the two films developed after much negotiation and cajoling. They were inclined to be hostile to the other. I tried to inform them about their common[…]

The Maltese Falcon

Actors & Personalities

1

Mary Astor: Prisoner of Kicks

  • May 3, 2023

Mary Astor was born May 3, 1906 and died September 25, 1987. In honor of this superb star, who was also a gifted novelist and memoirist and a sexually adventurous free-thinker[…]

Night Tide

Essays · Hollywood · Horror

0

The Demiurge in the American Eyesore: Night Tide

  • April 29, 2023

If Curtis Harrington had not had the ruined mall of hell unveiled to the world in 1905 as Venice of America as a setting for his occult fable, he might[…]

Betty Blue

Drama · Dreams · Essays · French Cinema

0

False Positive: Talking Betty Blues

  • April 22, 2023

to Lyssa You either go mad, or you learn about metaphors. – Allie Light * * * fou (masculine): crazy, mad, madman; see l’amour fou folle (feminine): crazy, mad, madwoman;[…]

Big Lebowski

Absurdism · Comedy · Drama · Mystery

0

The Evolution of the “Slacker-Sleuth” in The Big Lebowski and Under the Silver Lake

  • April 16, 2023

Whereas the Dude is a wholly passive protagonist, thrown begrudgingly into the chaos of conspiracy by the force of pure coincidence and designs of other, more motivated actors, Under the[…]

Delphine Seyrig

Actors & Personalities · French Cinema

0

Delphine Seyrig: The Eternal Return

  • April 10, 2023

“Seyrig is capable of stopping an entire film with one decisive physical gesture, one smile, one glare, one sound from her smoky, murmuring voice.”

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