Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 136

Screening Room: ‘Joy’

Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in ‘Joy’ (20th Century Fox)

Every holiday season now seems to come with a David O. Russell picture starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. This time out Lawrence plays Joy, a semi-fictionalized variation on the inspirational true story of Joy Mangano, a housewife-turned-inventor who became a multi-millionaire by creating the Miracle Mop and shilling them on QVC.

Joyopens, appropriately enough, on Christmas. My review is atFilm Journal International:...

Screening Room: ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’

So there’s a newStar Warsmovie coming out, in case you hadn’t heard. Thisis Episode 7 for those keeping track. Everybody apparently already has their tickets, so good luck getting a seat.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens everywhere this week. And no, there is no Jar-Jar cameo. My reviewis atPopMatters:

Arriving on screens with a strategic, not half bad recasting, Star Wars: The Force Awakens almost feels new. But as the TIE fighters and X-Wings tangle in their familiar dance and scrappy he...

Online Film Critics Society: Best Picture of 2015 is ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’

Tom Hardy and a one-armed Charlize Theron in ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’

Challenging the critical consensus that’s been gathering around The Revenant,Spotlight,andCarol for best film of the year, Online Film Critics Society—which includes yours truly among its members—voted yesterday that the year’s best film was in fact …Mad Max: Fury Road. One could theoretically argue that George Miller’s action film had just as much to say about the human condition (folly, greed, short-sightedness, environmental...

Writer’s Desk: Every Damn Day

If you’re a writer with an unusually generous bent, it’sgreatto hear about those writers who can just hurl the stuff out, like Ray Bradbury tossing offFahrenheit 451 in just nine days on a rented typewriter. But the rest of us have to work at it, and it’s hard then to be generous of mind when you’re on your fifth day in a row of absolutely nothing.

Still, that doesn’t mean there’s any way around it. As Walter Mosley said, writing is an everyday avocation. That’s particularly true if you’re tr...

Screening Room: ‘The Big Short’

When thehousing market bubble started to implode back in 2007 and 2008, precipitating the latest financial crisis, it came asa surprise tomuch of the world. Michael Lewis’s bookThe Big Shorttellsthe story of the analysts who sawthe implosion comingand discoveredthat nobody wanted to hear about it. Adam McKay’s film adaptation is an awesomely angry screwball satire of the apocalyptic andshort-sighted stupidity that lead to the crisis.

The Big Shortopens in limited release today, then everywher...

Weekend Reading: December 11, 2015

Harvard Business School: Hiring the very talented isn’t worth it, if they’re total jerks and everyone hates them. Internet white supremacy shows up in Minneapolis, with guns. Is France about to be taken over by the far right? City running out of money? Don’t worry, football fans, they’ll be sure to keep giving free stuff to the (very, very, very profitable)NFL. Coming soon to a TV near you: All guns, all the time. Should kids be allowed to play sports that can destroy their brains? Also, ap...

Screening Room: ‘In the Heart of the Sea’

One big whale: ‘In the Heart of the Sea’ (Warner Bros.)

In 1820, the Nantucket whaling shipEssex met a disastrous fate in the Pacific; only a few men survived. Later, the story that the ship had run afoul of a massive whale became the kernel ofMoby-Dick and was more recentlydissected in Nathaniel Philbrick’sIn the Heart of the Sea.

Ron Howard’s 3D adaptation of Philbrick’s book is opening this week, and hoping very much for some Oscar attention. My review is atFilm Journal International:

…It...

New York Film Critics Online: Best Picture of 2015 is ‘Spotlight’

Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Brian d’Arcy James, Michael Keaton, and John Slattery in ‘Spotlight’ (Open Road Films)

New York Film Critics Online, which generously includes yours truly among its membership, voted today on our best films of 2015. Unlike some years, when the opinion coalesces around two or three different films, this time only one film garnered multiple awards. That would be Tom McCarthy’s incredible eye-openerSpotlight, about theBoston Globereporters who uncovered the Catholic...

Writer’s Desk: Stop Complaining

Neil Gaiman has nopatience for the term “writer’s block.” To him, it smells like a cop-out. Also, according to him, it just doesn’t help:

If you turn around and go, ‘I am blocked,’ this is just something writers say because we’re really clever. It sounds like it has nothing to do with you: ‘I would love to write today, but I am blocked. The gods have done it to me,’ And it’s not true. Cellists don’t have cellist block. Gardeners don’t have gardener’s block. TV hosts do not have have TV host b...

Weekend Reading: December 4, 2015

Contraband smoking in ISIS territory. Black Friday means … . How do you make Japan’s military accouterments simply adorable? Add super-cute anime figures. What it looks like when a country just plain gives up. Who are the modern-day thought police? Every single actor in Hollywood is auditioning to play young Han Solo. Some Russian commanders no longer need authorization to launch nuclear weapons. Between Robert Peace and Ta-Nehisi Coates: A crisis of the black intelle...