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Avengers: Endgame; or Looking Ahead to 2016, the Liberal Fantasy Redo

This is all to say that Endgame is more interested in fantasy outcomes than solving the problems it gives itself. It promises us a future more bearable than our present[...]

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“Newest Ideas about Brain Power”: Hair Color and Jean Harlow, Hollywood’s Platinum Blonde

INTRODUCTION Jean Harlow (1911-1937), born Harlean Carpenter, rose to screen fame in the early 1930s playing characters with an unaffected, uninhibited, spontaneous sexuality. [See Figure 1.] Dubbed the “Platinum Blonde”[...]

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Bright Lights Film Journal

Singing in the Rubble: A Musical Map of the Cold War in Pawe? Pawlikowski’s Cold War

Suddenly jazz became a major taboo in Soviet society until Stalin’s death. In Western Europe, by contrast, mainly in Paris, jazz took off after the Nazis’ defeat in the hues[...]

The post Singing in the Rubble: A Musical Map of the Cold War in Pawe? Pawlikowski’s <em>Cold War</em> appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

Bright Lights Film Journal

She-Gods, Gangsters, and Gunslingers: The “New Woman” in the Early Films of Roger Corman

As part of their liberation from convention, Corman empowers female characters with choices both real and metaphorical. Even a common love triangle can represent female empowerment, with the choice between[...]

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Bright Lights Film Journal

Donald Trump: Lynchian Monster

“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” – The Mystery Man in Lost Highway * * * David Lynch is not a horror director. With the possible exception of Eraserhead, his films[...]

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FOLLOW-UP 6/19/19: The Lillian Gish/Bowling Green State University Controversy

Note: We don’t normally run press releases, but we’ve been close to the issue of Bowling Green State University’s removal of the names of Dorothy and Lillian Gish from the[...]

The post FOLLOW-UP 6/19/19: The Lillian Gish/Bowling Green State University Controversy appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

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Trash and Masochism: The Transcendent Aesthetics of Dungeon of Harrow

“. . . a jewel with facets of disease running all through it.” – Lester Bangs * * * It was once said that the real heroes of 18th-century writer[...]

The post Trash and Masochism: The Transcendent Aesthetics of <em>Dungeon of Harrow</em> appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

Bright Lights Film Journal

The Birth of Night Moves: Alan Sharp on the Edge of America

The movie’s reviews were mixed, and it failed to make a profit in the summer of 1975. . . .  but Night Moves has gone on to be recognised as[...]

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Bright Lights Film Journal

A Fine Romance: When Love Neither Leaves nor Stays

But goes on being itself * * * True Love in cinema is more than fine acting, well-written scripts, or even directorial tone. Not that IMDb cast and crew should[...]

The post A Fine Romance: When Love Neither Leaves nor Stays appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

Sexual Politics: On Olivier Assayas’s Non-Fiction

What interests me (and I suspect, Assayas) is not so much the substance of these dinner table debates, which tend to move in predictable repeating circles, as their texture. People[...]

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Bright Lights Film Journal

David Lynch in Hell: Finding Resolution in Twin Peaks: The Return

The final episode of The Return (and, indeed, Lynch’s entire canon) has nothing to do with the literal things, the tracing of narratives and the understanding of who does what.[...]

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A Woman’s Freedom: Dark Victory vs. Now, Voyager

This comparison shows Dark Victory to be conservative, and Now, Voyager to be liberal, on the question of how women can achieve lasting satisfaction. Of course, in Dark Victory one[...]

The post A Woman’s Freedom: <em>Dark Victory</em> vs. <em>Now, Voyager</em> appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

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

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[...]

The post John Huston and Stephen Crane: The Texts of <em>Red Badge of Courage</em> appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

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

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[...]

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

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[...]

The post “When Words Turn into Guns”: <em>Santa Fe Trail</em> (1940) and Its Times appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

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

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[...]

The post <em>The Last Black Man in San Francisco:</em> Talking with Production Designer Jona Touchet, Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, and Editor David Marks appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

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

 * * * 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,[...]

The post Metallica’s Kirk Hammett on Introducing Kids to Scary Movies, Why He Likes <em>Lords of Chaos,</em> and the Deal with Women and Horror appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

Bright Lights Film Journal

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

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[...]

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Filmography of the Closet: Coming Out through The Little Mermaid

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[...]

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Bright Lights Film Journal

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

“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[...]

The post “Tolstoy and Only Tolstoy. Nothing Comes from Us”: Sergei Bondarchuk’s <em>War and Peace</em> (1966-67) – Criterion Update appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

Bright Lights Film Journal

Orpheus Unending, or Beyond and Behind The Fugitive Kind

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[...]

The post Orpheus Unending, or Beyond and Behind <em>The Fugitive Kind</em> appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

Bright Lights Film Journal

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

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.[...]

The post The Architecture of Horror: Space, Light, and Atmosphere in Ari Aster’s <em>Hereditary</em> and <em>Midsommar</em> appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

Bright Lights Film Journal

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

“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[...]

The post On the Beautiful Pain of Saying Nothing: Desire, Silence, and Visual Inheritance in Pawlikowski’s <em>Cold War</em> and Antonioni’s <em>L’Eclisse</em> appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

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

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.[...]

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Bright Lights Film Journal

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

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[...]

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

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

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[...]

The post Lost Letter: HUAC, Immigration, and William Wellman’s <em>My Man and I</em> (1952) appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

Bright Lights Film Journal

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

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[...]

The post 8 Million Ways to Die (1986): An Autopsy of the Great L.A. Noir That Never Was appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

Bright Lights Film Journal

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

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[...]

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

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[...]

The post “This Film Is Blessed by the Gods”: Talking with Mag Hsu, Director of <em>Dear Ex</em> (Netflix, 2018) appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

Bright Lights Film Journal

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

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[...]

The post Who Carries the Banner? Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice 50 Years Later appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

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

The post Videograms of a Revolution: Surveillance, Self-Regulation, and Techno-Progressivism in M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass (2019) appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

Bright Lights Film Journal

Dispatch #1 from 2019 Doc NYC: Barbara Kopple’s Desert One

This is the first in a series of reviews by our New York correspondent Claire Baiz of entries in this year’s Doc NYC, the Big Apple’s – and one of[...]

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

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[...]

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Dispatches #2 and #3 from Doc NYC: Mr. Toilet: The World’s #2 Man and We Believe in Dinosaurs

This is the second (and third) in a series of reviews by our New York correspondent Claire Baiz of entries in this year’s Doc NYC, the Big Apple’s – and one[...]

The post Dispatches #2 and #3 from Doc NYC: Mr. Toilet: The World’s #2 Man and We Believe in Dinosaurs appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

Lesser Expectations: Joker and Classical Hollywood Cinema

Phoenix’s body is mostly skin and bones, which is ironic since the film attempts to flesh out the Joker. In fact, this Joker’s ribs and shoulder blades seem to be[...]

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Bright Lights Film Journal

Once Upon a Time – Shots in the Hyperreal (on Tarantino’s New Film)

“Hey, you’re Rick fucking Dalton. Don’t you forget it.” – Once Upon a Time – in Hollywood “And so art is everywhere, since artifice is at the very heart of reality.”[...]

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Joker: Sympathy Epic

“It’s there all the time, driving me out to wander the streets, following me, silently, but I can feel it there. It’s me, pursuing myself. . . . But who[...]

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Bright Lights Film Journal

Of Parasites and Their Hosts: Bong Joon-ho’s Gisaengchung (2019)

One of the ways in which Parasite differs from many more naturalistic movies about urban poverty is that access to mediated experience is shown to be a function of opportunity[...]

The post Of Parasites and Their Hosts: Bong Joon-ho’s Gisaengchung (2019) appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

Bright Lights Film Journal

The Favourite (2018): A Comedy of Pity

This gets at the heart of The Favourite, which is one of the most evident trends in anti-sexist filmmaking lately: to be willing to portray women as unadulteratedly evil, as[...]

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Bright Lights Film Journal

Klaatu’s Police Action: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Remembered

Suddenly, Gort doesn’t seem so powerful. We’re told of his strength and given a few meager examples. We have to take Klaatu’s word for it. The universe/world policeman is a[...]

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Talkin’ ’bout My Gentrification: The Secret Life of The Kirlian Witness (1979)

“The city was dirty. And dirt is fertile.” – Jeremiah Moss * * * New York City ca. 1976 was dying on the vine. With over a million citizens on[...]

The post Talkin’ ’bout My Gentrification: The Secret Life of The Kirlian Witness (1979) appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

Bright Lights Film Journal

At Sea, In Port, Up the River: Orson Welles’s Conrad Adaptations

Conrad was more than a mere influence. He was also a direct source of story material. Welles considered himself “made for Conrad” and frequently returned to Conrad’s original stories. Adaptation[...]

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To the Lighthouse: Cinematic Lighthouses in Shutter Island, Annihilation, and The Lighthouse

Through their own fragmentary narratives, which resemble Poe’s stream-of-consciousness diary, Shutter Island, Annihilation, and The Lighthouse mount challenges to our own perceptual abilities as viewers. They locate us in the[...]

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Bright Lights Film Journal

Alexander Gorchilin’s Acid (2018): Putin-Friendly Arthouse

My point here isn’t to suggest that Gorchilin and Pecheykin are government lackeys bent on pleasing Vladimir Putin. They’re young filmmakers working in a totalitarian country and have constraints that[...]

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Bright Lights Film Journal

“An Act of the Will”: A Review of The Irishman

The Irishman is delicate and full of restraint — ironic for a gangster flick. The heart of the film is sorrowful, in mourning for the spiritual emptiness of a materialist[...]

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“One Last Look at My Friends”: An Archetypal Review of Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker

Now, there is no reason or way to lay blame for this clash of styles, since Abrams devotees can fairly claim that Johnson started the revisionary process, and the Johnsonians[...]

The post “One Last Look at My Friends”: An Archetypal Review of Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

Bright Lights Film Journal

Tracking Mass Ideology on IMDb’s Top 250: How Shifts in Societal Values Appear in the Popular Film Canon

No film on the list embodies a retreat into populist myth as totally or as troublingly as Forrest Gump (1994). Though critically and popularly lauded at its release (winning the[...]

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Bright Lights Film Journal

At Spahn Ranch: The Tragic Heart of Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood

Who are these people? Watching Cliff try to figure it out is painful, because we know the future, but such knowledge is not power. Within its imagined boundaries, Once Upon[...]

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Bright Lights Film Journal

Monterey Dreamin’: 45 Years of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

In striving toward “that level of being real,” Burstyn handpicked much of the film’s eventual cast from her Actors Studio cohort – a decision that meshed well with both Scorsese’s[...]

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Bright Lights Film Journal

Women in Film: Interviews with Mati Diop, Marie Kreutzer, Haifaa al-Mansour, and Zoé Wittock at Berlinale, Toronto, and Sundance Film Festivals

Our globe-trotting correspondent Amir Ganjavie spoke with four emerging women directors at the 2019 Berlinale and Toronto International Film Festivals and the 2020 Sundance Festival. Collectively, they represent France (via[...]

The post Women in Film: Interviews with Mati Diop, Marie Kreutzer, Haifaa al-Mansour, and Zoé Wittock at Berlinale, Toronto, and Sundance Film Festivals appeared first on Bright Lights Film Journal.

Watching Taxi Driver with John Hinckley

Our nation has persisted in this state for so long that when we watch Taxi Driver, we always watch it with John Hinckley. It is a film that forces us[...]

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