Chris Barsanti

2 months ago | popmatters.com | Chris Barsanti

Warfare A24 A tight and terrifying docudrama combat procedural, Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland’s Warfare tracks just one engagement in the Iraq War. The firefight was unremarkable enough to have almost certainly been forgotten by anybody not there. For the soldiers and civilians involved, however, it was likely a singular moment of their lives. Mendoza and Garland do nothing to burden their story with external meaning.

2 months ago | popmatters.com | Chris Barsanti

Death of a Unicorn A24 If you find yourself wondering at any point during Alex Scharfman’s Grand-Guignol fantasy satire Death of a Unicorn, “Wait, how come there are unicorns in the Canadian Rockies which nobody has seen before?” then this is not the film for you. However, if some part of you is thinking, “I hope those vile ultra-wealthy despoilers of all that good and pure get what’s coming to them,” then you are in luck.

2 months ago | slantmagazine.com | Chris Barsanti

Frankie (Ariella Mastroianni) spends much of Ryan J. Sloan’s Gazer staring at strangers so she can maintain some grip on reality. Barely hanging on to a poverty-wracked existence, she finds a sense of meaning in creating backstories for those she surveils.

Feb 5, 2025 | popmatters.com | Chris Barsanti

A Complete Unknown Searchlight Pictures Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) arrives in New York at the start of A Complete Unknown in the back of a station wagon rather than on a horse. He might as well be a gunslinger showing up in a frontier town that needs his help. With just his bindle, guitar, and a cunning up-for-anything look, Dylan scans the Greenwich Village coffeehouse folk scene not like some rube from the sticks but rather a cool operator who knows virgin territory when he sees it.

Feb 4, 2025 | popmatters.com | Chris Barsanti

A Century of Tomorrows: How Imagining the Future Shapes the Present Bloomsbury It seems clear that many who argue that authors like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne should be read because of their supposed power of premonition don’t care for science fiction yet feel the urge to find a rationale. The joys of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea come from Captain Nemo’s achingly tragic quest for justice, not Verne’s prediction of electric submarines.