Bright Wall/Dark Room

Taken as a body of work, the Before trilogy asks us to consider the tension between its fantasy and naturalism, and the extent of our own ability to exert similar control over a lonely world that ushers us through life without concern for whether we’ve found any meaning in it.

Donnie Darko (2001) | Art by Tom Ralston

Stupid Man Suit

Lindsey Romain·

Issue 111: Time Travel

Removed from the impossible tangle of time travel, Donnie Darko is really just a mood.

Elaine May's ISHTAR (1987) | original poster by Tony Stella

Episode #15: Ishtar (1987)

Bright Wall/Dark Room·

Issue 110: 1987 Podcast

This month, we're waxing ecstatic about the humor and humanism at the heart of Elaine May's Ishtar. We match May’s compassion for the brashly stupid Chuck and Lyle (Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty, respectively) with special guest Frank Falisi, who lays out his theory that Ishtar is actually a high musical à la Vincente Minnelli.

When I Look in Your Eye

Frank Falisi·

Issue 110: 1987

Innerspace is bodily—hyper-bodily, even—and in the way it upends expectations surrounding size, it suggests similar chutes and ladders for emotion, identity, for existence.

“There Is No Time/There Is No Time”

Frank Falisi·

Issue 111: Time Travel

In its fragments, its gradations and flirtations with the experimental ambience it’s quote-unquote about, Todd Haynes' The Velvet Underground renders not a history of a band or even a moment but an alternative lens to re-collect (literally, re-touch) history.

Facets of the Jewel: On La Jetée

Alexander B. Joy·

Issue 111: Time Travel

Chris Marker's La Jetée is less tragic than instructive, exploring our incapacity to alter the past in order to urge us to come to terms with what has been.

Nothing Like Wrestling With a Moral Dilemma, Is There?

Elizabeth Cantwell·

Issue 110: 1987

No one really changes. But, Broadcast News asks, isn’t that kind of beautiful?

What Cannot Be Helped

Fran Hoepfner·

Issue 110: 1987

No book or film is perfect, far from it, but Maurice gets close. It grasps for an ideal, and often, that pursuit is just as worthy.

Back to the Suture: Transgressive Desire in Irma Vep

Mark Dzula·

Issue 111: Time Travel

Technically, Olivier Assayas' new Irma Vep is a remake about a remake of a film about a remake of Louis Feuillade’s epic 1915-16 silent serial, Les Vampires. Heartbreakingly, it’s about the consequences of trying to transcend reality by using filmmaking as a vehicle to touch the light.

A Drinker’s Peace

Travis Woods·

Issue 110: 1987

This is Withnail and I: Hilarious, tragic, less a cohesive narrative film and more a series of rowdy and ruddy vignettes—like stumbled stops along a pub crawl—designed to make one laugh until crying, and cry until laughing, in equal, sorrowful, comical measure.

The Zombification of Higher Academia

Spencer Williams·

Issue 110: 1987

While some would argue that Prince of Darkness fails thematically, narratively, and structurally when compared to other John Carpenter movies, I take pleasure in the film’s unruly appearances.

Crafting Our Way Out of Loneliness

Danielle Purdy·

Issue 110: 1987

Whether because of repeat viewings of The Brave Little Toaster, or my own wild imagination, as a kid, I deeply believed (and feared) that my belongings were alive.

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