‘Backrooms’ Is Horror Cinema’s ‘Lost’
Kane Parsons’ uncanny creeper Backrooms is a Borgesian labyrinth of thrilling yet ultimately disappointing potential. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Chris Barsanti
Chris Barsanti is a freelance writer, editor, consultant, and aspiring flâneur. A member of the National Book Critics Circle and the Online Film Critics Society, he has been published in the Chicago Tribune, The Hollywood Reporter, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Publishers Weekly, and Rain Taxi Review of Books, among other outlets. His books include Six Seasons and a Movie: How Community Broke Television, Monty Python FAQ, The Ballot Box: 10 Presidential Elections That Changed American History, and The Sci-Fi Movie Guide.
‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’ Is Fundamentally Silly
The jokes in Monty Python’s the Life of Brian bristle with ideas about the absurdity of dogma and obedience to power, but the Pythons didn’t care about making audiences angry over religious hypocrisy.
Stephen King’s Nightmares are Personal and Real
A Shakespeare scholar’s deep dive into Stephen King’s 1970s work illuminates the elemental nature of fear.
‘Project Hail Mary’ Tests Our Limits
By trying to recreate The Martian with Project Hail Mary, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller prove how elusive such broadly appealing blockbusters are.
‘Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie’ Is Meta All the Way Down
Matt Johnson’s goofy Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is so laden with tricks, gags, and irony that it somehow registers as sincere.
My Most Anticipated Films of 2026
As surely as “Dumpuary January” follows the fall awards season, a new year brings a slew of anticipated films. If the industry is in trouble, nobody has told these directors.
The Best Films of 2025
Like life itself in these times the visceral, the absurd, and the morbid all take their rightful place in our eclectic compilation of Best Films 2025.
Claire Denis’ ‘The Fence’ Is Dense with Import and Meaning
In Claire Denis’ arch and darkly funny film, The Fence, colonialism isn’t history, it’s not even past.
‘Father Mother Sister Brother’ Traverses Those Awkward Familial Gaps
Jim Jarmusch’s low-key comedy of awkwardness, Father Mother Sister Brother explores the things we can never know about our families.
‘Eddington’ Is a Feverishly Funny Neo-Western Provocation
No major film since Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction has tackled the culture war fray with the force, specificity, and humor of Ari Aster’s Eddington.
‘The Martians’ Probes the First Time Americans Went Nuts for Aliens
David Baron’s pop history of the early Martian mania, The Martians, probes how deception, promoted by the fantasies of single-minded obsessives, predated Silicon Valley.
‘Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning’ Is So Very Much Too Much
There is too much passion and too little cynicism in Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning to dismiss it entirely.