Bright Wall/Dark Room

As much as I enjoyed Marty Supreme, it does bother me that there is little to know Oscar talk about Ethan Hawke, who really got the contradictory essence of Lorenz Hart just perfectly in this.

this is anecdotal bullshit that probably felt right and obvious to the author and the outlet, but it's actually false. I'm always pleasantly surprised by how much people love a long read.

❤️🙏

Almost every essay we publish is at least that long, often longer. People still enjoy deep reading & are looking for a good excuse to immerse themselves in something worthwhile—especially in a clickbait economy/world. Clickbait articles are cheetos & some of us still prefer a well-prepared meal 🤷‍♂️

Blue Moon (2025): Prayer The fallout of Blue Moon is an assertive, pile-driving movie star performance from Ethan Hawke, but most compelling is how Linklater & his collaborators have rendered this occasion to tell about a lif...

New today on the site!

The Best of 2025 issue concludes with @frankfalisi.bsky.social on musical theater, My Funny Valentine, Ethan Hawke, Richard Linklater, Lorenz Hart, and BLUE MOON

Blue Moon (2025): Prayer The fallout of Blue Moon is an assertive, pile-driving movie star performance from Ethan Hawke, but most compelling is how Linklater & his collaborators have rendered this occasion to tell about a lif...

New today on the site!

The Best of 2025 issue concludes with @frankfalisi.bsky.social on musical theater, My Funny Valentine, Ethan Hawke, Richard Linklater, Lorenz Hart, and BLUE MOON

Someone Else’s Shoes Throughout their body of work, and especially in 'The Red Shoes,' Powell and Pressburger return to the question of whether life and art can co-exist.

"Throughout their body of work, Powell and Pressburger return to the question of whether life and art can co-exist, and if the urge to live or the urge to create will win out in the end."

Avatar: Fire and Ash—Dreamwalking and the Book of Eywa Avatar: Fire and Ash—the end of one trilogy and the potential beginning of another—is the darkest, most complex, and personal of the three.

I wrote 6,000 words on AVATAR for @brightwalldarkroom.com, diving into how James Cameron's stereoscopic dreamland is a conduit for a radical, transportive empathy that harkens back to the origins of cinema itself:

www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2026/03/02/d...

Love this!

Avatar: Fire and Ash—Dreamwalking and the Book of Eywa Avatar: Fire and Ash—the end of one trilogy and the potential beginning of another—is the darkest, most complex, and personal of the three.

New on the site!

Our Best of 2025 issue continues, with @brendanhodges.bsky.social on AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH

(🎨 by @mosesleeart.bsky.social)

Lone Star (1996): No Wild and Aberrant Star The driving force of Lone Star isn’t the suspense of discovery, but the moral weight of what’s already known—and what people choose to do with it.

Yesterday was Texas Independence Day. Today is Election Day. Last year for @brightwalldarkroom.com I wrote about Texas and Texans in LONE STAR, a film which is perhaps more relevant now than it was when it premiered thirty years ago.

Towards a True Children’s Cinema: on My Neighbor Totoro My Neighbor Totoro requires this kind of childlike mindfulness. It’s less like a ride you can strap into and more like a place you can go.

Towards a True Children’s Cinema: on My Neighbor Totoro - @laurenwilford.bsky.social

Linklater // On Cinema & Time Created for Sight & Sound / BFI

A video essay from Kogonada about Richard Linklater and the Before trilogy that never doesn't hit hard, slows down your brain a little, and makes you cry in the good way

All That Jazz (1979): Hello Loneliness, I Think I'm Gonna Die Bob Fosse's 'All that Jazz' is at once a confession, a self-promotion, a showbiz love letter, an apology, and a middle finger.

Hello Loneliness, I Think I’m Gonna Die: Bob Fosse’s Dance with the Five Stages of Grief in ALL THAT JAZZ

- @aheartofgould.bsky.social

A little blown away by Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie. It includes a scene about 2/3 of the way of the movie where I laughed for 45 straight seconds while everyone else in the theatre was dead silent with their hands over their mouths. Ends with a lot of heart. Good movie.

the war is unpopular but it's also illegal but it also doesn't serve any purpose but it also undermines diplomacy but it also is set to produce the opposite outcome as intended but it also already has hundreds dead and threatens more but it also will not make anything better for anyone but it also

Gave CATCH ME IF YOU CAN a rewatch tonight. Still a masterpiece.

Hard-to-see great film alert: ALL THAT JAZZ is on TCM Sunday night.

Paramount should enjoy its growing news monopoly while they have it because when Democrats win back power we are going to break up these anti-democratic information conglomerates. All of them.

Different from the Others (1919): A Language for Loneliness By developing subtle material techniques to depict loneliness, Different from the Others moves beyond sentimentality.

"'We’ll always have Casablanca,' my mom told me when I was young, as we watched it together late at night. Between household names like Bogart & Bergman, the lesser-known Conrad Veidt also loomed: long-limbed, broad-shouldered. Ironic, him playing a bad man in a uniform, keeping my childhood safe."

The best thing you can do in light of the Ellison takeover of Warner Brothers invest your time, energy, and money in supporting independent creators and independent distribution networks and independent venues. It is absolutely crucial to make independence a viable option.

It’s bad for motion pictures, and it’s bad for America.

Pouring one out for the ghosts of Louise Brooks, Billy Wilder, and every gorgeous chorine in every fab Warner Brothers pre-code musical, you and so many others built studios that don't deserve your legacy.

"Friends" is a beloved American sitcom that aired from 1994 to 2004, following six young adults—Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe—living in New York City. The show explores their friendships, romances, careers, and personal growth over ten seasons.

I somehow missed that Ed wrote a script for Steven Soderbergh starring Michaela Coel and Sir Ian but the hierarchy of my most-anticipated 2026 movies is about to change.

MAKE AN EMERGENCY DONATION to Trans Continental Pipeline right now.

They are a Colorado based org that helps trans people relocate there and they are overwhelmed with requests. CO borders KS, and TCP has the infrastructure to help get people out.

GO DONATE.

tcpipeline.org

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025): Aperture, Chamber, Blockage If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is about motherhood, but more broadly it's about the intense difficulties of caring for anything besides oneself.

New on the site!

The Best of 2025 issue continues, with Rose Rowson on IF I HAD LEGS I'D KICK YOU

Tom Hanks playing Lincoln in a live-action stop motion animation hybrid adaptation of an an amazing but seemingly unfilmmable George Saunders novel, adapted by Saunders and directed by Duke Johnson (who co-directed Anomolisa with Kaufman) is either gonna be amazing or terrible and i am here for it

The Fragile Humanity of Top Gun: Maverick (2022) There are moments in Top Gun: Maverick that I’d dare to call Faulknerian in their understanding of history and human fallibility.

Maybe So, Sir, but Not Today: The Fragile Humanity of Top Gun: Maverick

This is exactly right. The Onion quietly left Twitter a month ago and... our weekly subscribers went up. It's because we're doing well here, on Instagram and on YouTube.

As a business, being on Twitter is somewhere between useless or detrimental, unless you're selling boner pills.