‘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.
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.
‘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.
‘Drop Dead City’ Finds New York’s Soul at Its Lowest
Documentary Drop Dead City tells a serious story about NYC’s 1975 financial crisis with wit, gusto, and occasional profanity
‘Warfare’ Tells a Brutally Universal Story Through a Narrow Lens
Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland’s taut and astringent Iraq War film, Warfare, is horrifying but also quite human.
‘Death of a Unicorn’ Substitutes Hot Splatter with Soft Satire
The satire in the Grand-Guignol fantasy Death of a Unicorn is not barbed enough to really skewer viewers with its point about greed.