Ethan Warren, Author at Bright Wall/Dark Room

It would seem paradoxical for a film to be both excessive and minimalist, and yet this synthesis is exactly what Wim Wenders achieves with Kings of the Road, taking a storyline so small that it strains the very definition of the term and blowing it out to epic length. Read More

Short Film Spotlight: Night Shift

Ethan Warren·

Short Film Spotlight

Night Shift touches the universal, and the divine, in its own small way, and all without ever losing sight of the urinal over its shoulder. Read More

Short Film Spotlight: Aquaculture

Ethan Warren·

Short Film Spotlight

Much of the exhilarating appeal of Artemis Shaw’s short, Aquaculture, lies in its assured harnessing of uncanny dissonances. Read More

It’s Hard To Stay Exciting For A Whole Lifetime

Ethan Warren·

Issue 68: Time

If The Last Picture Show is a movie about savoring your precious misery, Texasville is a movie about having a bad case of the blues. Read More

Tyrannosaurus Death! | Bright Wall/Dark Room

Short Film Spotlight: Tyrannosaurus Death!

Ethan Warren·

Short Film Spotlight

Tyrannosaurus Death! is a film that grabbed me, shook me, and spat me out with a new perspective on the balance between grace and pain that comprises this life. That’s a pretty good value in just 15 minutes. Read More

First Reformed (2018) | art by Brianna Ashby

I Can Whistle With That: What the Stories of 2018 Show Us About Responding to Despair

Ethan Warren·

Issue 67: Best of 2018

On the one hand, everything we do may be meaningless. Oblivion may be the only truth. But on the other, maybe it’s exactly this ultimate despair that makes our all our everyday actions essential. Read More

A Christmas Story | art by Brianna Ashby

In Turkey We Trust

Ethan Warren·

Issue 66: Food

It can be so frustrating to have parents, particularly at mealtimes. Read More

The Tumult Breaks Loose

Ethan Warren·

Issue 65: Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf is the story of a marriage crumbling in a void. Read More

Step Brothers (2008) | art by Brianna Ashby

Notes Towards a Theory of the Uncanniness of Step Brothers

Ethan Warren·

Issue 64: The Uncanny

Lots of comedies are funny because they’re goofy, but Step Brothers is funny for the liminality of the world in which it takes place, a world hovering between live-action cartoon and kitchen-sink reality so precariously that it almost seems to violate the laws of comedy physics. Read More

Watching the Wheels: Finding Meaning and Purpose in Paterson

Ethan Warren·

Issue 63: Work

In the world of Jarmusch’s film, the purpose of work lies not in external achievement, but in the personal satisfaction of doing. Read More

These Corruptible Vessels

Ethan Warren·

Issue 62: Body

Pet Sematary is not a movie that cares about your sensitivities. What it does care about, to the point of obsession, is bodies—and the horrors that can befall them. Read More

Scene from Fahrenheit 451, illustrated by Tony Stella

Burn the Ashes

Ethan Warren·

Issue 61: Heat

Fahrenheit 451 is often hailed as a dire vision that’s only become more relevant with time. And yet there is so little in this story that I recognize from the world around me. Read More