Issue 123: Nostalgia Archives - Bright Wall/Dark Room

News from Home reminds us that film, as an art form, is only capable of reconstructing, re-making paths that have already been trod, of showing scars but not soothing the wound, of hearing from home but being unable to change the fact that it took you a long time to come back.

A Marvelous Grace

Julia Sirmons·

Issue 123: Nostalgia

Legendary directors Max Ophüls and Luchino Visconti are all over its sets and settings, but in its bones Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel pays tribute to the effortless glamour, ineffable humor, and pleasurable melancholy of Ernst Lubitsch.

An Audrey Girl

Carrie Courogen·

Issue 123: Nostalgia

The older I get, the more I find myself impressed by Audrey Hepburn as an actor who was great in spite of her packaging; by the evolution of her raw and untrained talent over the span of her relatively short career; and most of all, by the undeniably prickly undercurrent of her most iconic films.

As Much As I’d Like to Stay

Nathaniel Missildine·

Issue 123: Nostalgia

Perhaps I can trace my steps backward and forward, anticipating and restoring the nostalgia, with a little less trepidation thanks to my early time spent with The Big Chill. By the time I reached my own cold fronts, I had the reminder that others had passed this way before.

Can’t Remember to Forget You: Memento in Twenty Fragments

Abigail Oswald·

Issue 123: Nostalgia

Memento is not an exact mirror of Leonard’s lived experience, but its structure forces the viewer to confront the ephemerality of memory on a loop, just as he does. The constant losing battle of trying to hold on to distinct moments, even as they slip beyond our reach.

Screenshot from the trailer for Boulevard Nights

Cruising Towards Memory: On Boulevard Nights

Tom Cendejas·

Issue 123: Nostalgia

Now edging past middle-age, Chicano, raised in southeast L.A., a professional educator, I’ve been engaged in an affair with movies that has lasted a lifetime—and realized I’m always riding shotgun myself when it comes to truly sharing a common film past.

Episode #32: The Craft (with Katie Walsh)

Veronica Fitzpatrick & Chad Perman·

Issue 123: Nostalgia Podcast

It’s nearly spooky season and we’re waxing nostalgic for The Craft (1996) with Los Angeles film critic and podcaster extraordinaire Katie Walsh. We get into crushing on Robin Tunney, the 90s, the death of subculture, slow-motion hallway walks, where are their parents—and stay tuned for Katie’s on-air pull from the Rachel True tarot deck.

An illustration of the titular Amy (Joey Lauren Adams) from CHASING AMY in front of a blue comic-illustration-style background.

Facing Amy

Betsy Housten·

Issue 123: Nostalgia

The first few times I saw Chasing Amy, I loved it. Central to my adoration was the inimitable Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams)—her confidence and swagger as she sat on a playground swing set and impishly demonstrated the act of fisting with her hands, interrogated heterosexual men about their limited perceptions of sexuality and desire, and played gratuitous tonsil hockey with another woman on the crowded dance floor of legendary NYC dyke bar Meow Mix (RIP).

John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara in a scene from The Quiet Man (1952) | Republic Pictures

I Know Your People, Sean

Ciara Moloney·

Issue 123: Nostalgia

Irish people lay claim to and celebrate The Quiet Man—there’s a whole museum in the village where it was filmed—but just as often, we cringe away from it, anxiously imagining that this is how Americans see us. But the truth is, The Quiet Man is a much bigger deal to us than it could ever be to them.

Margot Robbie in BARBIE | art by Brianna Ashby

I Used to Float, Now I Just Fall Down

Lindsey Romain·

Issue 123: Nostalgia

Barbie is not entirely a musical. It’s more a patchwork quilt of influence: the scuttlebutt dialogue of Hawks, the quiet sensuality of Almodóvar, the transient yearning of Wenders. But it’s the musicality that brings it to life—that pours soul into Barbie’s plastic limbs.

I’m Already Thinking About You

Emma Ward·

Issue 123: Nostalgia

Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman manages to recognize the rich and complex interiority of children—a rarity in art, especially art made by and for adults; it simply depicts children as children know themselves to be.

The Alternative Press

Ethan Warren·

Issue 123: Nostalgia

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?