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Chris Barsanti
Image: Chris Barsanti

Chris Barsanti is an habitual scrivener on books and film for the lucky readers of PopMatters, Film Journal International, Film Racket, and Publishers Weekly, and has also been published in The Chicago Tribune, The Millions, The Barnes and Noble Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and New York Film Critics Online. His books include Filmology: A Movie-a-Day Guide to the Movies You Need to Know and Eyes Wide Open 2012: The Year’s 25 Greatest Movies (and the 5 Worst). His writings can be found here.


Features

Monday, January 14 2013

Films Facing Reality in 2012

The only movie of 2012 that makes a strong case for America being a cohesive social body with moral purpose binding it together is Lincoln. For those keeping track, that film is set 147 years ago.


Thursday, August 23 2012

What 'True Romance' Did for Tony Scott and Hollywood

Tony Scott’s take on this violently funny genre mishmash gave his career new life, and also transmitted Quentin Tarantino’s vision more credibly than the screenwriter and then-novice director could have done himself.


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.


Columns

Wednesday, February 20 2013

‘Going Clear’: Lawyers, Guns, Money & Scientology

Lawrence Wright’s devastating, impeccably researched history of Scientology’s “Prison of Belief” vividly illustrates the ability of this “Church” to successfully prey upon nearly every dark strain in the modern American psyche, from celebrity-worship to ego-mania and the lust for power and money.


Thursday, October 11 2012

Woe is Us: ‘What’s the Matter with White People?’

Salon editor Joan Walsh’s half-brilliant and half-confused memoir / manifesto posits that many white Americans have historically taken out their frustration over declining opportunities on minorities … and Democrats.


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.


Reviews

Monday, June 17 2013

Human Rights Watch Film Festival New York 2013: 'deepsouth' & 'The New Black'

deepsouth and The New Black both explore American social and political history, but they take different approaches to addressing GLBT rights in America.


Friday, June 14 2013

Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2013: 'An Unreal Dream' and '99%'

Two stirring documentaries show the consequences of inhumane systems, namely, criminal justice and financial industry corruption.


Wednesday, June 5 2013

A Burning Match Is Set to Art and Anarchy in 'Something in the Air'

Revolution is less of an action with a direct purpose than a way of life in Olivier Assayas’ heady, conflicted ode to the anarchic spirit of May 1968.


Friday, May 24 2013

Greta Gerwig's Frances Is Not a Real Person, Yet, but She's Working on It: 'Frances Ha'

Noah Baumbach’s deft romantic comedy spoons a nice helping of sugar into a dark premise.


Friday, May 24 2013

The Technicolor Revolution: 'Comandante: Hugo Chávez's Venezuela'

While Hugo Chávez preached and promised, ruling with media savvy but blind indifference to details from the obfuscating labyrinth of Caracas ministries named ‘El Silencio’, Venezuela itself rotted.


Avatar [18.Dec.09]
A Serious Man [11.Dec.09]
Serious Moonlight [11.Dec.09]
The Last Station [9.Dec.09]
Endgame [6.Nov.09]
It Might Get Loud [10.Sep.09]
9 [9.Sep.09]
Grey Gardens [20.Apr.09]
Brothers by Yu Hua [23.Feb.09]
Bonnie and Clyde [1.May.08]

Blogs

Monday, March 4 2013

David Foster Wallace Unpacks Pop Fiction

A newly available syllabus from a 1994 class taught by David Foster Wallace shows a great willingness to engage with mass-market fiction on a critical level.


Tuesday, February 26 2013

The Academy Awards Are Decadent and Depraved

If the 2013 Oscars ceremony is the best that Hollywood can do, it's no wonder that movies like 'Life of Pi' and 'Silver Linings Playbook' took home awards.


Wednesday, January 23 2013

Getting on With It in ’56 Up’

In the eighth installment of Michael Apted’s epochal documentary series, his aging participants (one of cinema’s greatest assemblage of living characters) provide not just a telescope into the past but also a kind of primer for how to live, even as the specter of mortality starts to cast its shadow.


Friday, December 14 2012

A ‘Hobbit’ That Overstays Its Welcome

The first installment of Peter Jackson’s new Middle-Earth trilogy has nearly as much going for it (Martin Freeman as Bilbo, much untampered-with Tolkien dialogue) as it does against it (that chintzy-looking 48 FPS speed, bloated screenplay).


Thursday, December 6 2012

The '2016' "Snub"

Dinesh D'Souza's complaints about the Academy "snubbing" his Obama documentary for political reasons would be worthy of note...were his film any good.


Icons at War in ‘Skyfall’ (Short Ends and Leader) [16.Nov.12]
In ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Money Matters (Short Ends and Leader) [10.Aug.12]
‘Take This Waltz’: The Rites of Summer (Short Ends and Leader) [29.Jun.12]
The 5 Greatest Martin Scorsese Oddities (Short Ends and Leader) [6.Mar.12]
Five Oscars the Academy Got Wrong (Short Ends and Leader) [1.Mar.12]
The Bad News Statisticians: 'Moneyball' (Short Ends and Leader) [23.Sep.11]
The Not-Quite Lost Art of the Movie Poster (Short Ends and Leader) [6.Apr.11]
'Sucker Punch'; The Zack Snyder Experience (Short Ends and Leader) [25.Mar.11]
'The Fighter', Quietly Brawling (Short Ends and Leader) [17.Dec.10]
ESPN Films 30 for 30 Gift Set Collection, Volume 1 (Consuming Consumables) [14.Dec.10]
The Pacific (HBO Miniseries) (Consuming Consumables) [13.Dec.10]
Encyclopedia of the Exquisite (Consuming Consumables) [9.Dec.10]
Silverdocs Documentary Festival 2010: 'Regretters' (Notes from the Road) [28.Jun.10]
The A-Team: Flying Tanks and Jolly Rangers (Short Ends and Leader) [11.Jun.10]
Alice in Wonderland: The Triumph of Reason (Short Ends and Leader) [5.Mar.10]
Shutter Island: In a Lonely Place (Short Ends and Leader) [19.Feb.10]
Blue World: James Cameron’s 'Avatar' (Short Ends and Leader) [17.Dec.09]
Fables the Deluxe Edition: Book One (Consuming Consumables) [2.Dec.09]
We Live in Public: Post-Reality TV (Short Ends and Leader) [30.Aug.09]
Inglourious Basterds: The Trouble with Tarantino (Short Ends and Leader) [21.Aug.09]
Harry Potter, Forever! (Short Ends and Leader) [15.Jul.09]
Redemption of a Jerk (Re:Print) [6.Jul.09]
Away We Go: Home Sweet Wherever (Short Ends and Leader) [5.Jun.09]
The Sucker King (Re:Print) [29.May.09]
Outrage Review Censored (Short Ends and Leader) [19.May.09]
A Shortage of Villainy (Short Ends and Leader) [7.May.09]
The Beats: A Graphic History (Re:Print) [15.Apr.09]
Adventureland: Bastards of Young (Short Ends and Leader) [8.Apr.09]
Watchmen (Consuming Consumables) [14.Dec.08]
Willie & Joe: The WWII Years (Consuming Consumables) [4.Dec.08]
WALL-E: 3-Disc Special Edition (Consuming Consumables) [30.Nov.08]
The Graphic Report: Summer Edition (Re:Print) [11.Aug.08]
Consumer Apocalypse: WALL-E (Short Ends and Leader) [30.Jun.08]
Late Delivery: Take Out (2004) (Short Ends and Leader) [28.Jun.08]
HBO: The Movie (Short Ends and Leader) [29.May.08]
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Short Ends and Leader) [22.May.08]
The Will Eisner Edition (Re:Print) [22.Jan.08]
Mexican Radio (Re:Print) [11.Jan.08]
The Graphic Edition (Re:Print) [6.Jan.08]
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan [$13.95] (Consuming Consumables) [29.Nov.07]
The Road by Cormac McCarthy [$14.95] (Consuming Consumables) [19.Nov.07]
National Book Awards (Re:Print) [16.Nov.07]
Truth in Comics: After the Deluge (Re:Print) [3.Nov.07]
Bookmarks: The Book of Vices (Re:Print) [29.Sep.07]
We Are (Somewhat) Amused (Re:Print) [30.Aug.07]
Winning the Right War (Re:Print) [23.Aug.07]
The World Without Us (Re:Print) [7.Aug.07]
Getting Biblical (Re:Print) [30.Jul.07]
Soon-Forgotten Harry (Re:Print) [23.Jul.07]
Vampire Love Triangle (Re:Print) [19.Jul.07]
The next Potter? (Re:Print) [16.Jul.07]
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