Chris Barsanti is an habitual scrivener on books and film for the lucky readers of PopMatters, Film Journal International, and Publishers Weekly, and has also been published in Kirkus Reviews, The Chicago Tribune, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. A senior writer at filmcritic.com, he is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and New York Film Critics Online. He is the author of Filmology: A Movie-a-Day Guide to the Movies You Need to Know. His writings can be found at The Barsanti Nexus.
Features
Monday, January 16 2012
Movies 2011: American Gothic
While comic-book apocalypses ripped across US multiplexes, some smaller films of 2011 envisioned an icier, more disruptive darkness at the heart of the American family.
Thursday, January 6 2011
It Was a Very Good Year for Film
Now that the first decade of the new millennium is done with, despite what the snarking class might say, the state of film is very healthy indeed -- even considering atrocities like Sex and the City 2.
Tuesday, August 11 2009
Chronicling Catastrophe: Dave Eggers and the American Nonfiction Novel
When faced with catastrophe, from wars to natural disasters, the nonfiction novel is sometimes the only medium that can do justice to the chaos.
Monday, June 29 2009
2009 Silverdocs Documentary Festival
Silverdocs 2009 was a rewarding and refreshing event, offering classic and independent documentaries and previewing several that will crop up over the next year or two on TV and art house screens.
Thursday, May 7 2009
Near Misses and Gems: 2009 Tribeca Film Festival
Selecting just 85 feature films for screening, this year's Tribeca Film Festival increased the quality quotient, cutting the number of embarrassing failures that once studded the schedule like a minefield.
Columns
Thursday, November 4 2010
President Obama and The Long Fade
Two new books on the Obama presidency make clear that the dream, such as it was, is over -- though not necessarily in the way you'd think. Whether or not something has actually died, the obituary has already been written for Barack Obama's promise of progressive reform
Thursday, February 19 2009
Oscar Nominated Short Films 2009
Unlike stiff features like The Reader or even the wildly uneven Curious Case of Benjamin Button, this year's Oscar-nominated shorts program is pretty much a risk-free venture.
Thursday, February 12 2009
Two Lovers: All Your Choices Are Bad Ones
What James Gray bravely does in Two Lovers is return the idea of pain, and the threat of bad decisions, to the American film romance.
Thursday, February 5 2009
Taken: Daddy Tortures Best
Mill's towering righteousness is just too much for this weak little film, whose only interest is in affirming the white patriarchal prerogative.
Thursday, January 29 2009
A Perverted Perception of Movies
The success or failure of The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema hinges greatly on what one thinks of Slavoj Zizek's free-range associations on desire, blood, human waste, castration, and social control in films.
Reviews
Monday, January 9 2012
The Gag of Recognition: 'Long Story Short'
Colin Quinn’s quick and laugh-heavy sprint through history and philosophy ties everything back to America: "the bouillabaisse of fallen empires".
Friday, December 30 2011
'The Iron Lady' Is Historical Mush
Meryl Streep’s performance as Margaret Thatcher is well honed, but it can’t save this doddering, amateurish spectacle.
Friday, December 16 2011
Steve Jobs As Tech’s Gordon Ramsay
In Walter Isaacson’s highly engaging if too-soon biography, Steve Jobs emerges as a character who thought he could will the impossible into reality – and he was often right.
Friday, December 9 2011
'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ Offers Bleak Charms
In his slowly paced, dirty-minded adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, director Tomas Alfredson is faithful to the painstaking part of le Carre’s baroque and cynical fictions, almost to a fault.
Wednesday, November 23 2011
'Rampart' Is Woody Harrelson's Show from the Start
In Rampart, L.A. cop Dave Brown's past isn’t ever past. His hungers, for cash or drink or carnal nights, will ultimately swallow him whole.
Blogs
Friday, September 23 2011
The Bad News Statisticians: 'Moneyball'
There’s an ugly and unromantic truth behind Bennett Miller’s baseball stats semi-comedy Moneyball that it acknowledges and then dances away from.
Friday, July 29 2011
‘Cowboys and Aliens’ is Better Faux-Spielberg Than ‘Super 8’
Jon Favreau proves a better pupil of the master’s than the more slavish J.J. Abrams.
Thursday, June 23 2011
In Mark Kurlansky's 'What', It's All About the Journey, Not the Destination
Mark Kurlansky’s curious, sliver-like investigation asks, What’s more important, the question or the answer?
Tuesday, April 19 2011
We Will Be Fooled Again: Paul Allen and Greg Mortenson Write from Peculiar Points of View
The scandal over the possible truthiness of Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea leaves us with a lesson that apparently needs to be taught again and again.
