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
Friday, February 20 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.
Friday, February 13 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.
Friday, February 6 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.
Friday, January 30 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, April 30 2012
Can You Spare a Tax Break? Thomas Frank’s ‘Pity the Billionaire’
How did the Tea Party turn the Great Recession into another opportunity to grind down government and reward the rich? Progressives let them.
Friday, April 27 2012
‘The Five-Year Engagement’ is a Preordained Slog
This grindingly long romantic comedy suffers from the smug belief that a couple of affable stars can compensate for a lazy lack of purpose.
Tuesday, April 17 2012
Snark Attack: Rachel Maddow's 'Drift'
By ignoring much of the growth of the military establishment in the '50s and '60s, Rachel Maddow makes the current state of affairs appear to be the work of a few misguided presidents, not the logical end result of decades’ worth of societal militarization.
Friday, April 13 2012
Talking in Circles: ‘Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close’
Stephen Daldry’s adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel about a boy who goes searching for clues after his father’s death on 9/11 is yet another failed attempt to translate this author to the screen.
Thursday, March 22 2012
Sadness Like Shrapnel: 'The Killing: Season One'
With all the televised murder being screened night after night, it’s the rare mystery that returns episode after episode to the human element, and death’s emotional fallout.
Blogs
Monday, May 14 2012
This Is All There Is: The Boredom of Lessened Expectations
The Avengers and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel opened on the same day... they're less different than you think.
Monday, May 7 2012
Watch Adam Yauch's "Fight For Your Right Revisited"
MCA's 2011 Sundance short is a celebrity-packed homage to everything the Beastie Boys were about.
Friday, March 9 2012
Moving Documentary 'Shakespeare High' in Select Theaters Beginning 9 March
Shakespeare High is undeniably moving when it focuses on the young actors’ dedication and joy, as they work through their scenes and begin to sort out their lives in the process.
Thursday, March 8 2012
Oh, Indeed: ‘The Wire’ and False Choices
Grantland’s ‘Smacketology’ bracket for determining the ‘greatest character’ from The Wire is an exercise in futility; nevertheless, it begs the question(s): What makes a character great, and how can there be only one?
