Ethan Warren, Author at Bright Wall/Dark Room

Penelope Cruz in Vanilla Sky (2001) | Paramount Pictures

Never have I encountered a more fascinating case of self-indulgence than the diptych of Abre los ojos and Vanilla Sky, two films identical in plot but divergent in story, one chilly and distant and the other seeming to have been shot from inside the most passionate depths of the director’s soul. Read More

Wendy (Benh Zeitlin) | Courtesy of Sundance Institute

I Lost It at Altitude: Missives from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, Part Two

Ethan Warren·

Festivals

I frequently took my mental temperature after this year’s Sundance screenings, searching for symptoms of that dreaded ailment, festival fever. I’ve fought mightily to maintain critical detachment, but it bears acknowledgement that the following assessments were made during one of the most emotionally tumultuous weeks I can remember. Read More

Reeling at Altitude: Missives from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, Part One

Ethan Warren·

Festivals

There’s a question that has long been my personal riddle of the sphinx: what is “a Sundance movie”? Read More

The Beach Bum (2019) | art by Tony Stella

In The Year of The Impossible Object

Ethan Warren·

Issue 79: Best of 2019

The way we experience movies shapes the way we experience life, and to experience a movie like The Beach Bum, to ingest and absorb this much giddy existential gratitude, strikes at least this viewer as quite a blessing. Read More

The Muppet Christmas Carol | art by Brianna Ashby

A Grand Yuletide Theory: The Muppet Christmas Carol is the Best Adaptation of A Christmas Carol

Ethan Warren·

Extras

Only one movie has ever managed to recreate that uniquely Dickens magic, achieving it not so much through adaptation as through transmutation. Read More

Dumb Capitalism: The Righteous Grifts of Nathan For You

Ethan Warren·

Issue 78: Best of the Decade

How a Comedy Central docuseries hosted by an unassuming weirdo rode a tidal wave of scams straight into the pantheon of the decade’s strangest and most significant art. Read More

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

Ethan Warren·

Issue 77: Neo-Noir

Fargo is an outlier in the world of neo-noir, protecting its heroes by ending their stories and defiantly leaving their purity intact as though to prove that happy endings are possible. Read More

No Man’s Land

Ethan Warren·

New Releases

It would be natural to assume it’s impossible to recreate Harold Pinter’s effects on-screen. What cinematic setting could ever replicate the feeling of an ordinary space that simultaneously exists in a howling metaphysical void? Read More

Short Film Spotlight: It’s Been Too Long

Ethan Warren·

Short Film Spotlight

Amber Schaefer’s It's Been Too Long is the erotic parody we need and deserve in 2019. Read More

A New Spirit for ‘75!

Ethan Warren·

Issue 76: Second Acts

Martin Scorsese's Conjuring the Rolling Thunder Revue is the life story of the Bob Dylan who mysteriously reemerged onto the Greenwich Village scene of 1975. Or, at least, it’s a story of that Bob Dylan. Read More

The Heartbreak Kid (1972) | poster art by Tony Stella

Still Heartbroken After All These Years

Ethan Warren·

Issue 75: Elaine May

The Heartbreak Kid as Elaine May’s Master Class. Read More

Simon Pegg in The World's End (2013) | Focus Features

About That Night

Ethan Warren·

Issue 74: Long Nights

Watching The World’s End today, separated from my first viewing by six years that feel more like a lifetime, I don’t see a thrilling and heart-wrenching story. Instead, I see one that’s profoundly sad. Read More