Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 36
March 19, 2022
Screening Room: ‘Windfall’
The new semi-comedic and would-be Hitchcockian thriller keeps its premise limited, which is welcome in a time of over-busy movies, but still misses the mark. Windfall is playing now on Netflix. My review is at Slant: As cinematic criminals go, the one who starts the action rolling in Charlie McDowell’s tragicomic hostage drama Windfall takes an unusually …
March 16, 2022
Reader’s Corner: ‘We Don’t Know Ourselves’
Born in Dublin in 1958, journalist Fintan O’Toole grew up in Ireland just as the country was shaking off (or, more often, not) the bonds of pre-modern theocracy that kept them in the past. His “personal history” We Don’t Know Ourselves tells how a country tried to enter the modern world without losing its soul. …
March 15, 2022
Screening Room: ‘The Outfit’
In Graham Moore’s new Hitchcockian thriller The Outfit, a shy-seeming tailor is wrapped up in a tense game of wits with a passel of paranoid gangsters. The Outfit opens in limited release this Friday. My review is at Slant: On the surface, the film’s story couldn’t be more different than that of Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation …
March 14, 2022
Screening Room: ‘Master’
Regina Hall stars in Master, a new horror film from Mariama Diallo that adds topical layers to its frights and scares. Master will be released this Friday on Amazon Prime. My review is at PopMatters: Diallos’ film, which bolts together race-conscious academic satire and haunted-house narrative, is set at the fictional Ancaster College. A Northeast …
March 13, 2022
Screening Room: ‘America, We Have a Batman Problem’
How many Batman movies is too many? It seems like we are finding out. My article, ‘America, We Have a Batman Problem’ is at Eyes Wide Open: Batman’s appeal to artists and audiences is understandable. His immense wealth, traumatized childhood, and schizophrenic relationship with the villains he hunts provides a buffet of dramatic possibilities. Batman’s …
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Writer’s Desk: Make Things Up to Get By
Writers go through hard times like anybody else. For some, their writing can then become a slog. When things are bad, many of us like to escape from ourselves. And when you are sitting alone, hour after hour, plumbing your thoughts for new insights and plot points and similes (“The fresh-risen sun painted the sky …
March 8, 2022
Screening Room: ‘After Yang’
In After Yang, the new film from Kogonada (Columbus), a couple living in the near future has to confront a host of unexpected issues ranging from grief to questioning what it means to be human when their android Yang, purchased as a companion for their daughter, malfunctions. My review of After Yang is at PopMatters: …
March 6, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Characters Need to Change
When Dan Harmon was first attracting notice as the creator of the cult sitcom Community, he also frequently expounded on his ideas about story creation. In large part, the narrative framework he crafted drew in self-acknowledged fashion from Joseph Campbell, but dealt more with writerly needs (establishing audience interest, etc.). The gist of his story …
February 27, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Don’t Give Up
You are writing a story. Things are coming together. You can see the ending. Not only that, you can feel the ending. And it’s going to be great. But. There’s that one section that just is not working out. It feels awkward. Forced. Fake. You start to worry the whole endeavor is doomed. Not so …
February 20, 2022
Writer’s Desk: Teach What You Practice
W.H. Auden might be lionized today, but like most writers he never made a great living. Verse tends not to pay the bills. But teaching about verse can. Or giving talks. Even writing about writing. This Auden knew: It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing …
