Bright Lights Film Journal :: November 2009

November 2009 | Issue 66

Editorial

Keep watching the lights . . .

Gary Morris

Articles

Roman Polanski: What's on Trial?

By Karin Luisa Badt

Looking at Charlie: Modern Times

By Alan Vanneman

An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin "Buck up! Never say die! We'll get along!"

Past Sunset: Noir in the West

By Imogen Sara Smith

"I don't need other people. I don't need help. I can take care of me."

On the Escarpment, Off the Escarpment: It Helps When the Love Is Strong

By D. J. M. Saunders

Especially when the lovers aren't

Porno to the People: The Danish Revolution That Liberated America

By Jack Stevenson

"Tease was out, honesty was in."

The Dead Things We Already Are: Pod People, Body Snatching, and the Horrors of Business as Usual

By Jesse Stommel

"We keep returning to this story about pod people because we're terrified of the continuing erosion of our physicality in the postmodern era."

The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover: Larry Cohen's The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover

By Jay Rothermel

How a movie exposé of "abuse of power" defends those in power and their institutions

Contagious Homosexuality: Cruising and Sodom and Gomorrah

By Rob Faunce

"In both Sodom and Gomorrah and Cruising, homosexuality — and its alternate currents — is caught with a glance."

Can't Repeat the Past? Of Course You Can't — and Shouldn't

By Suzanne del Gizzo

Filming The Great Gatsby in the 21st Century

Blake Edwards vs. Hollywood: Sunset and the Myth of Hollywood's Golden Age

By Barry Wurst II

A tour of Edwards' curious 1988 film, with side trips to variations by James Ivory, John Schlesinger, and others

Movies

Film Kills: Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds 1

By Vlad Dima

"Tarantino thus concedes some of his omnipotence to the medium he so deftly manipulates."

"Do You Find Me Sadistic?" Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds 2

By Lee Weston Sabo

"This is the World War II film confronting its Jungian shadow, acknowledging its darkest impulses and finally purging them."

Of Perfect Plans and Acts of Creation: Stanley Kubrick's The Killing

By Robert Castle

"His plan mirrors Johnny's, that is, pieces of the plan are known to one person: Johnny and Stanley; and not until the end do we see most of their pieces come into place.""

Critical Distance: What Knowing Knows About 9/11

By Devan Goldstein

"Where Cloverfield provocatively blurs the line between being 'about' 9/11 and being (mere) entertainment, Knowing lands squarely in the latter camp."

Playing It Safe with John Dillinger: Michael Mann's Public Enemies

By Joan McGettigan

"Dillinger had recently undergone plastic surgery to alter his face and to try to remove his fingerprints. But Public Enemies does not dare to depict that kind of desperation and that determination to survive under any circumstances."

"They Come in Peace": Andy Fickman's Race to Witch Mountain

By Jay Rothermel

"Only saviors can save polluted planets, yellow cab drivers are losers . . ."

Far from Elementary: Debra Chasnoff's Straightlaced: How Gender's Got Us All Tied Up

By Gary Morris

"I told him, 'I'm not gay. My neck was cold.'"

Stars

Delphine Seyrig: The Eternal Return

By Dan Callahan

"Seyrig is capable of stopping an entire film with one decisive physical gesture, one smile, one glare, one sound from her smoky, murmuring voice."

Sean Connery: A "Natural Thrust"

By Christopher Sandford