Who Is the Monster in Claire Dederer’s ‘Monsters’?
In Monsters, Claire Dederer explores how fans’ “dumb love” of art can exist with “heartbreak” and unresolved feelings about monstrous artists.
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.
It’s Too Hot to Hate in Climate Change Series ‘Extrapolations’
Scott Z. Burns’ audacious if dramatically uneven climate-change Apple TV+ series shows that while the Earth will change radically, people will not.
The ‘Master Gardener’ Is Another Paul Schrader Bad Guy with a Gun and a Past
In Master Gardener, Paul Schrader uses the curiously arch story of an ex-White Power killer hiding out as a gardener to deliver another story of a lonely avenger seeking absolution through violence.
Ben Affleck’s Nike/Michael Jordan Film ‘Air’ Tries to Elevate Marketing
Ben Affleck’s ridiculously crowd-pleasing Jerry Maguire-like movie Air, about Nike landing Michael Jordan, makes a nearly too-late pivot into meaningful marketing.
‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ Goes Down Shooting
Despite an egregious running time and padded plot, the (maybe) conclusion to Keanu Reeves’ series, John Wick: Chapter 4, still serves up some of the original’s delightful weirdness.
Tahiti-Set Drama ‘Pacifiction’ Toys with Power Plays in Paradise
Albert Serra’s Tahiti-set drama Pacification submerges an espionage plot in an off-kilter portrait of a French official situated between the colonizers and the colonized.
The High Before the Fall: Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Adventures of Baron Munchausen’
Stranger than Terry Gilliam’s 1990s hits and less aggressive than his later work, the glorious fantasy The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was the last film where his talents fully flowered.
‘Living’ Rages Ever So Properly Against the Dying of the Light
Oliver Hermanus’ Living, a faithful remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, stars Bill Nighy as a terminally ill repressed bureaucrat who realizes it’s time to rage against the dying of the light.
Hollywood Is a Helluva Drug in Damien Chazelle’s ‘Babylon’
Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt’s characters burn the candle at both ends in Damien Chazelle’s rollicking and ridiculous epic cautionary tale, Babylon.
‘White Noise’ Is a Pop Art Fever Dream of Catastrophe and Consumerism
Noah Baumbach’s bright, funny, and nervy White Noise vividly translates Don DeLillo’s classic of mid-1980s American consumerist-medicated anxieties.
Could Longtermism Cause Short-Term Damage?
William MacAskill’s What We Owe the Future is an audacious plea to help our future humans with longtermism thinking, but it is blind to what we need now.
Riveting ‘Retrograde’ Makes Warfare in Afghanistan Personal
Matthew Heineman’s dizzying documentary, Retrograde, sees the fall of Afghanistan through the eyes of one beleaguered Afghan general.