Ethan Warren, Author at Bright Wall/Dark Room

The now of Joan Micklin Silver’s 1977 masterpiece Between the Lines is a major concern for the characters. What is this generation’s identity now, another decade into adulthood and another decade removed from the days in which they believed they might actually change the world?

It’s Called a Repair

Ethan Warren·

Issue 113: Recovery

C’mon C’mon isn’t necessarily about making the world as a whole comprehensible to a child. It’s about grappling with how comprehensible to make one key fact: his mom isn’t with him because his dad is having a manic episode.

The Shooting (1966) | Art by Dani Manning

Ride to Nowhere

Ethan Warren·

Issue 112: B-Movies

Monte Hellman's The Shooting offers a clear and present microcosm for the world’s unknowable hostility.

Arizona in a Handbasket

Ethan Warren·

Issue 110: 1987

In their myriad crime stories, the Coens have tended to take a fatalistic perspective. And then there is the strange case of Raising Arizona's H.I. McDunnough.

Watching

Ethan Warren·

Issue 109: Voyeur

A movie as dense and deep as Adaptation offers a communal awakening, one that ideally leads to new insights on the human capacity for thought and emotion.

An Unprincipled Man

Ethan Warren·

Issue 106: Paul Newman

Hud is a film with hard choices and few clear answers—and perhaps this ultimately accounts for its cult appeal among a youth culture who would soon usher in a morally ambiguous New Hollywood.

Just Take Me Out of My Mind

Ethan Warren·

Issue 105: Moments

All I can say for certain is that, for just under four minutes, Dan Deacon took me out of my mind.

Sundancing With Myself, Vol. 2

Ethan Warren·

Festivals

For any theoretical questions concerning how to Sundance, I was more concerned with the question of why to Sundance. And the answer is: access to a week of new sensation and perception in the doldrums of mid-winter.

Wild Mountain Thyme: The Bird and the Bee

Ethan Warren·

Issue 102: FUBAR

My unpopular opinion is that Wild Mountain Thyme is a transcendent work of art. Not from any objective standpoint, but rather from that of one particular head and heart: my own.

He’s Come a Long Way, Baby: Licorice Pizza, Reviewed

Ethan Warren·

New Releases

For the first time, Paul Thomas Anderson has produced a film distinguished not merely by his characteristic fascination with the world but by a deep love for it.

Young Goodman Wirt

Ethan Warren·

Issue 100: Transcendence

The web of influences upon Over the Garden Wall is vast, but everything coheres around a core of classical Americana, one rooted firmly in the northeast.

It’s All Happening

Ethan Warren·

Issue 99: Desert Island Movies

Almost Famous is not just a story about falling in love with life’s possibilities, nor is it just a story about falling in love with music; at its heart, Almost Famous is a film about falling in love with writing about music. It’s the story of how a boy became a critic.