‘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.
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.
‘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.
Bob Dylan Film ‘A Complete Unknown’ Is a Folk anti-Western
In wandering hero terms, Bob Dylan film A Complete Unknown is less a George Stevens’ Western like Shane and more an Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo – with guitars.
The Future Isn’t What It Was
Glenn Adamson’s absorbing survey of futurology, A Century of Tomorrows, reveals that how societies predict the future says more about the era they’re living in.
Sundance Film Festival 2025 Is at a Crossroads
While the Sundance Film Festival still uplifts under-the-radar films in an increasingly challenging market, its future may be in doubt.
Alfred Hitchcock At the Peak of His Skill
Alfred Hitchcock: The Iconic Film Collection shows a master of restlessness and range at the peak of his skill and in the last full bloom of his career.
Mati Diop’s Documentary ‘Dahomey’ Complicates Colonialism
Mati Diop’s Dahomey documentary about the 2021 return of looted artworks to Benin looks more to the present and future than the past.