Chad Byrnes

Los Angeles

LAWeekly film critic. Rock and roll, horror films, classic and modern literature, love and darkness and all things inbetween.

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Articles

Review: ‘Materialists’ Looks to Bend the Rom-Com Into a New Shape

2 weeks ago | laweekly.com | Chad Byrnes

Korean Canadian filmmaker Celine Song brings her pensive touch to the classic rom-com in Materialists, her follow-up to 2023’s Past Lives, attempting to subvert the genre and deconstruct it to its finest thread. Unlike in the romps from the ’90s with Sandra Bullock or Hugh Grant, Song contextualizes the pitfalls of dating as a more serious enterprise than you’d expect — nobody face-plants or acts like a clown to engender laughs.
‘Materialists’ Looks to Bend the Rom-Com Into a New Shape

2 weeks ago | villagevoice.com | Chad Byrnes

Korean Canadian filmmaker Celine Song brings her pensive touch to the classic rom-com in Materialists, her follow-up to 2023’s Past Lives, attempting to subvert the genre and deconstruct it to its finest thread. Unlike in the romps from the ’90s with Sandra Bullock or Hugh Grant, Song contextualizes the pitfalls of dating as a more serious enterprise than you’d expect — nobody face-plants or acts like a clown to engender laughs.
Review: ‘Friendship’ Plumbs the Human Condition Through Surrealist Satire

1 month ago | laweekly.com | Chad Byrnes

Have you ever texted someone and never received a response? Well, A24’s comedy of bad manners, Friendship, taps into that frustration … with a power drill. Director Andrew DeYoung’s exploration of broken masculinity and middle-aged isolation manages to be the funniest — and the cringiest — film of the year.
Review: ‘Friendship’ Plumbs the Human Condition Through Surrealist Satire

1 month ago | villagevoice.com | Chad Byrnes

Have you ever texted someone and never received a response? Well, A24’s comedy of bad manners, Friendship, taps into that frustration … with a power drill. Director Andrew DeYoung’s exploration of broken masculinity and middle-aged isolation manages to be the funniest — and the cringiest — film of the year.
Review: Although saddled with glitches, ‘On Swift Horses’ just crosses the finish line

1 month ago | marinatimes.com | Chad Byrnes

Elegiac yet restrained and lyrical, Daniel Minahan’s On Swift Horses explores the lives of two lost souls trying to find their footing in 1950s America. What initially seems a forbidden tryst between the main characters, played by budding Hollywood stars Jacob Elordi and Daisy Edgar-Jones, becomes something else entirely: a quest for morality and love in a society that doesn’t recognize their authentic selves.
Review: Although Saddled With Glitches, ‘On Swift Horses’ Just Crosses the Finish Line

2 months ago | villagevoice.com | Chad Byrnes

Elegiac yet restrained and lyrical, Daniel Minahan’s On Swift Horses explores the lives of two lost souls trying to find their footing in 1950s America. What initially seems a forbidden tryst between the main characters, played by budding Hollywood stars Jacob Elordi and Daisy Edgar-Jones, becomes something else entirely: a quest for morality and love in a society that doesn’t recognize their authentic selves.
Review: ‘Death of a Unicorn’ Is a Creature Feature Satire that Needs Sharper Teeth

Mar 27, 2025 | villagevoice.com | Chad Byrnes |R.C. Baker

With a title like Death of a Unicorn, your expectations might be unrealistically high or very low (depending on how you feel about the mythological horned creatures). Either way, writer/director Alex Scharfman’s debut, which features literal unicorns impaling billionaires, is undeniably ambitious and occasionally amusing, even after it runs out of steam from a draggy second act.
Going Down ‘The Cocaine Drain’ With the Cowsills

Feb 19, 2025 | villagevoice.com | Chad Byrnes |Brett Callwood |R.C. Baker |C.S. Muncy

Ginger: My Latest Obsession. For some, the enveloping grip of a new musical love equals that of a new partner. Only with as many flings as your desires can consume. A new one every six months even. I say obsession, but obsession becomes addiction when fear is replaced by pleasure. And few things bring me as much pleasure as falling into a new musical relationship with something I’d previously somehow managed to live without. My newest is The Cowsills.
New Yorkers Protest Local Boy Made Bad

Feb 18, 2025 | villagevoice.com | Chad Byrnes |Robert Shuster |C.S. Muncy |Frank Pizzoli

Defying the cold, thousands of New Yorkers gathered at Union Square on Presidents’ Day in a demonstration sponsored by Rise and Resist and 50501 to protest Queens native Donald Trump’s disregard for the Constitution and Elon Musk’s status as an unelected government overlord.
Fighting the Rerun President’s Dark Vision of Autocracy

Feb 14, 2025 | villagevoice.com | Chad Byrnes |Rob Staeger |Peter Noel |Christian Viveros-Fauné

∼ ∼ ∼ This article is part of a series—At 250, Who Will America Be?—reporting on threats to American democracy as we approach the nation’s Semiquincentennial, on July 4, 2026. ∼ ∼ ∼On Inauguration Day, at the precise moment he was becoming the 45th president of these Un-United States, Donald Trump uttered the first lie of his second term.