Chris Barsanti

Screening Room: ‘Boorman and the Devil’

chrisbarsanti — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 16:11:05 +0000

I reviewed the new documentary Boorman and the Devil for The Playlist: The columnist Murray Kempton had a secret for getting a great story: Always go to the loser’s locker room. That was where the real drama was. This is why stories about films that went disastrously wrong will almost always be more compelling than making-of accounts …

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Screening Room: ‘It Ends’

chrisbarsanti — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:36:48 +0000

I reviewed the new horror film It Ends, which opens in theaters this Friday, for Slant Magazine: Alex Ullom’s directorial debut, It Ends, is a neatly crafted, if somewhat under-imagined, inquiry into a Twilight Zone scenario, with a dash of Buddhist philosophy thrown in for good measure. Given the vogue for elaborate lore, backstories, and endlessly forking possibilities …

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TV Room: ‘The Shards’

chrisbarsanti — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 15:19:42 +0000

I reviewed the new Ryan Murphy FX series adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ last novel The Shards for Slant Magazine: Set in 1981, Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s 2023 novel The Shards is a metafictional, richly stylized gothic horror take on teen melodrama that takes itself just seriously enough. Things start with Bret himself, played …

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Screening Room: Every Christopher Nolan Film Ranked

chrisbarsanti — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 13:41:12 +0000

So what was left to do in preparation for The Odyssey? Go through Christopher Nolan’s entire filmography and assess how they all stack up. While the ranking is definitionally from “worst” to “best,” there really isn’t a bad film in the batch, so all in all a pleasant assignment. “Every Christopher Nolan Film Ranked” was …

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Screening Room: ‘Wham! 10 Days in China’

chrisbarsanti — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 22:59:10 +0000

My review of Wham! 10 Days in China ran at The Playlist: Among the most refreshing aspects of “WHAM! 10 Days in China” is the film’s openness about the mercenary nature of the groundbreaking event it depicts. In 1985, Wham! had become massive stars in the UK, their effervescent catchiness creating an infectious bridge between New Romantic …

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Screening Room: ‘Backrooms’ is Horror Cinema’s ‘Lost’

chrisbarsanti — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 14:03:18 +0000

I wrote about the new horror hit Backrooms and a certain TV show whose promise and disappointments it resembles for PopMatters: To begin, aside from the required warning that spoilers follow, let us stipulate that what happened in movie theaters in the early summer of 2026 was a good thing for the art and the …

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Screening Room: ‘Tuner’

chrisbarsanti — Wed, 20 May 2026 22:37:53 +0000

I reviewed Tuner for Slant Magazine: For his first narrative after a run of smart, propulsive documentaries, among them 2022’s Oscar-winning Navalny, Daniel Roher delivers a propulsive modern noir that might not be especially smart but has an appealing cleverness and lightness of touch. Written by Roher and Robert Ramsey, Tuner’s hook is in its high-concept story …

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Screening Room: ‘In the Grey’

chrisbarsanti — Sat, 16 May 2026 15:57:23 +0000

I reviewed In the Grey for Slant Magazine: The Guy Ritchie content conveyor belt continues to turn with In the Grey, another largely disposable actioner that starts off as a breezy romp and ends up an overly dense spider’s web of almost arbitrary plot choices punctuated by automatic weapons fire. The comedically dense plot isn’t a …

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Writer’s Desk: Sell Your Story on eBay

chrisbarsanti — Sun, 03 May 2026 12:00:00 +0000

For all those currently bereft of inspiration, here’s a reason to pick up your pen again. The Advanced Fiction Workshop at the University of Arizona is trying out an experiment they’re calling Significant Objects: Writers purchase an essentially valueless object (less than $5, typically secondhand), write a story or essay or poem about it, and …

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Writer’s Desk: Focus on the First Line

chrisbarsanti — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0000

A bored reader has lots of other things to do. Hook them right away. Do not waste your time, because if you do they will feel you are wasting theirs. William Gibson’s Neuromancer kicks off with one of the greats: The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. …

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TV Room: ‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’ is a Very Silly DVD

chrisbarsanti — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:54:21 +0000

My review of the new Criterion 4K edition of Monty Python’s Life of Brian ran at PopMatters: Fittingly, Life of Brian was conceived on a pub crawl. The standard origin story, as told in one of the documentaries on Criterion’s packed special features disc, is that while they were boozing around Amsterdam during the press tour for Monty …

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Screening Room: ‘Power Ballad’

chrisbarsanti — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 01:08:33 +0000

I reviewed Power Ballad at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival for Slant Magazine: John Carney’s Power Ballad has most of what it needs to succeed, from a charming pair of leads to a fittingly catchy song. But like the fraught relationship between its two musician characters, Rick (Paul Rudd) and Danny (Nick Jonas), the film never …

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Writer’s Desk: A.I. is Too Easy

chrisbarsanti — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Read the book, not the summary. Write the piece, not the prompt. Suffer like the artist you are. It ain’t easy, but if it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth doing. Colson Whitehead, ladies and gentlemen.

Reader’s Corner: Stephen King’s Real Nightmares

chrisbarsanti — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 18:02:00 +0000

I reviewed Caroline Bicks’ new book on Stephen King for PopMatters: An academic by training, Bicks specializes in Shakespeare and has several works on the Bard to her name, e.g., Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World (2021). As such, she frames Monsters in the Archives as a literary researcher ready to leverage her training in deep text analysis. Yet …

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Writer’s Desk: Hard is Not Impossible

chrisbarsanti — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 14:35:14 +0000

One thing writers always want more of is time. We often think that if we only had long stretches of uninterrupted, unencumbered hours stretching out before us like a rapture-worthy landscape, then all of our work could get done. There is some truth to this. It’s hard to knock out a novel while working fourteen-hour …

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