"Because success was nowhere in sight, we kind of couldn't fail. There were no expectations; nobody was going to do anything for us. We could complain, but who would listen? You just had to make something. So we did! We made our own cafés, our own bands, our own record labels, our own movies, and it was great."
Watching All the President’s Men in 2026 provokes a gentle aching because it documents an ecosystem of institutional faith that no longer exists—that truth, once uncovered, possesses the power to shift the world.
To my mind, the 1976 version succeeds better than any other Kong remake, simply because it understands one key idea: King Kong is a story about an ape.
We tell ourselves we’re individuals, beholden to no one, even as we’re shaped by our circumstances. We think of ourselves as the main character. We print the legend. Both Josey Wales and Keoma embody that sense of individualism—and, intentionally or not, their respective movies bear the weight of the contradiction at the heart of being an American.
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Featured Essays
from the archives (2013 - 2025)
Interviews
From a psychological perspective, there’s a great deal of similarity between a howl of laughter and a scream of terror. Alfred Hitchcock tapped into the mechanism behind that duality with preternatural skill. Comedy, like horror, operates on the principles of tension and release.
Girls is a show about people whose lives often mirror my own—or perhaps, whose lives I’ve modeled my own after—and rewatching it, I still feel the thrum of resonance deep in my gut.
Rewatching Jennifer Coolidge in Austenland feels like the emotional opposite of doomscrolling—a return to safe and comforting rather than a digital conveyor belt of brand-new bad news.
The BW/DR Archives
Suspicions, Hearsay, and Pillow Talk
Black Bag (2025)
Tomorrow’s Gonna Be Better
A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
Stranger Days
A Scriptment
Double Features: The Church Is What We Do Next
Wake Up Dead Man and Conclave
We Passengers
Io Capitano (2023)


































