featured Archives | Bright Wall/Dark Room

Well before Christian Grey donned his dumb ripped jeans, James Spader embodied the paradigmatic combination of vulnerability and composure; his appeal, from Crash to Secretary, requires our conviction that he would, and would like to, and could, punish us—only gently. Read More

Reach To Your Heart

Isabel Cole·

Issue 72: Thirst Traps

I want to be Big Dick Richie, drenching myself in water to the beat of my favorite song. I want to be that alive to the present moment, that connected to my own heart. Read More

No Way To Managua: Bridging the Forces of Fate and Identity in William Friedkin’s Sorcerer

Travis Woods·

Issue 71: Resilience

Obsessed with manifesting Sorcerer’s message on film, Friedkin failed to see he was living that very message during its sanity-snapping production: that which is behind us cannot be returned to. All one can do is persevere for as long as possible into the fates that our pasts have shaped for us. Read More

If I Were the Devil, You’d Be the Only One I Would Tell

Kellie Herson·

Extras

Holly Hunter in BROADCAST NEWS | art by Brianna Ashby

Broadcast News presents adulthood as an exercise in weathering the relentless sensation of being not-quite-enough and not-quite-right. Read More

The Endless Rage of Hayao Miyazaki

Eric McAdams·

Issue 71: Resilience

Princess Mononoke | Hayao Miyazaki | art by Tony Stella

A sense of warring duality is everywhere in Princess Mononoke: selfishness and altruism, nature and humanity, life and death. Read More

Xenomorph

Sara Eliza Johnson·

Issue 71: Resilience

Maybe what draws you to deep space is this species of terror: evidence of your vulnerability, but also of a primal intelligence inside you, a reminder that you’re still a feral animal somewhere within this misshapen human form. Read More

Religious Cinema for Non-Believers: Martin Scorsese’s Silence

Joel Mayward·

Issue 70: Going Long

Martin Scorsese's Silence is about entering into the cloud of unknowing, the dark night of the soul, listening to the silence of God and waiting eternally for a response. Read More

Conversation Piece: A Sonata on Human Connection in Five Movements

Brad Nelson·

Issue 69: 1994

Three Colors: Red (1994) | art by Tony Stella

As a narrative, Kieślowski's Red is often recursively and sometimes even reflexively understood. It’s a film of ellipses, of threads dropped and picked up until, suddenly, they are woven. Read More

My Loneliness is Killing Me

Isabel Cole·

Issue 67: Best of 2018

Eighth Grade (2018) | art by Brianna Ashby

This is where humiliation lives: in the gap between the self we want to be and the self we actually are. Read More

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

Ethan Warren·

Issue 67: Best of 2018

First Reformed (2018) | art by Brianna Ashby

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

Notes Towards a Theory of the Uncanniness of Step Brothers

Ethan Warren·

Issue 64: The Uncanny

Step Brothers (2008) | art by Brianna Ashby

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