Tag: Movies

Screening Room: ‘Boorman and the Devil’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film-DocumentaryLeave a comment

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 about a classic where everything came together perfectly. There is also more to learn in watching Francis Ford Coppola flail about in “Hearts of Darkness” or “Megadoc” than yet another story about the mastery of “The Godfather.” Witnessing how easy it is for an artist to crash and burn can make the great works resonate as even more rare and precious. “It’s a precarious business,” John Boorman says in David Kittredge’s “Boorman and the Devil,” quoting a producer who once told him that maybe five percent of films succeed. Kittredge’s fraught subject, the making of Boorman’s 1977 misfire “The Exorcist II: The Heretic,” was not among that five percent…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘It Ends’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

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 in fantastical films, from Backrooms to the MCU, Ullom shows an admirable preference for storytelling that’s tightly focused in scope and still leaves room for the unknown…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: Every Christopher Nolan Film Ranked

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - New, Film - RepertoryLeave a comment

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 published at PopMatters today:

 Christopher Nolan’s films pack in audiences, win awards, and leave people excitedly puzzling out their twists and meaning for years. For mainstream audiences and cinephiles, his work provides a vanishingly rare opportunity to have one’s cake and eat it, too.

With the release of Nolan’s 13th, and by most metrics biggest, film, The Odyssey, it’s a good time to review his full body of work. Here are all of Nolan’s 13 features, ranked worst to best…

Screening Room: ‘Wham! 10 Days in China’

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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 synth and bubblegum pop. But they had not achieved the end goal of every British act, namely, breaking into the U.S. market. Seeking an attention-grabbing stunt, Wham!’s management came up with a high-risk gambit: Become the first Western pop band to play in China…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘In the Grey’

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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 problem until Ritchie, who wrote the script, tries to tie it all together into something that makes a bit of sense. He comes close but doesn’t quite deliver, having tossed too many balls in the air to have a remote chance of catching all of them…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Fantasy Life’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - Festivals, Film - New1 Comment

I reviewed Fantasy Life for Slant Magazine:

Writer-director Matthew Shear’s Fantasy Life is an initially familiar-feeling rom-com about urbane yet nerve-rattled characters that eventually, but just barely, transcends expectations. A law school dropout who appears constantly shell-shocked by the concussions of everyday life, Sam (Shear) is first seen getting fired from his impossibly bleak office job before having a panic attack at a bookstore. With seemingly few prospects, he takes on a job as a manny for the children of a wealthy couple, Dianne (Amanda Peet) and David (Alessandro Nivola). Sam almost immediately falls headlong for Dianne, an ex-actor suffering from different but similarly debilitating and career-stifling mental health issues…

Here is the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie’

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(Courtesy of Neon)

I reviewed the new Matt Johnson film Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie for PopMatters:

For those who enjoy or get past Johnson’s clowning, Nirvanna is a deftly intricate mockumentary about friendship, celebrity, and the trap of nostalgia shot like a sci-fi nerd’s YouTube paean to Back to the Future, all wrapped inside a love letter to Toronto. Johnson and co-writer Jay McCarroll play slightly tweaked versions of themselves, much like Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan self-spoofed themselves in The Trip series…

It opens tomorrow. Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘The Story of Documentary Film’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - Festivals, Film-DocumentaryLeave a comment

I reviewed the first episode of Mark Cousins’ new series, The Story of Documentary Film from the Sundance Film Festival for The Playlist:

Excited as we might be about ‘Dune: Messiah’ or ‘Wuthering Heights,’ the cinematic event of 2026 is more likely to be seen on a small screen and is about five times as long as ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash.’ The greatest chronicler of modern film and what it means to the world, Mark Cousins, has followed up his landmark series ‘The Story of Film’ with a new sixteen-parter, ‘The Story of Documentary Film,’ the first episode of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. If this initial taste is any indication, the next fifteen hours will be something glorious…

The Best of 2025

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Film - Awards, Publishing / MediaLeave a comment

Worried about not having enough to do in the long cold weeks after New Year’s? You needn’t worry. Here are some best-of lists I wrote or contributed to about the best films and books that came over the transom in 2025:

Screening Room: ‘Ballad of a Small Player’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Adaptations, Books, Film - New, streamingLeave a comment

My review of the latest confection from Edward Berger (Conclave) is at Slant Magazine:

Ballad of a Small Player is a fevered, neon-drenched film about a man on the run from his crimes and himself, and it wants to simultaneously revel in the glamor of high-end gambling and critique the unending gluttony that fuels it. This isn’t an unusual tack for Berger, as his All Quiet on the Western Front has a similarly confused relationship to the industrial violence that it lasciviously depicts. But this film, adapted by Rowan Joffe from Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 novel of the same name, is all about the possible spiritual redemption of spiraling gambler Lord Doyle (Colin Farrell), and its ambivalent perspective on the greed and glitz of his world makes it difficult to invest much care in what happens to him…

Ballad of a Small Player will be available on Netflix tomorrow. Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Father Mother Sister Brother’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - Festivals, Film - NewLeave a comment

I reviewed Father Mother Sister Brother‘s U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival for PopMatters:

If there is a lesson Jim Jarmusch is trying to impart in his latest feature, Father Mother Sister Brother (and dear Lord, let’s hope he is not), it is this: Nobody knows anybody. Even when you are related. Maybe especially when you are related…

Father Mother Sister Brother should be opening in December. Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Play Dirty’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Adaptations, Film - NewLeave a comment
Mark Wahlberg, LaKeith Stanfield in Play Dirty (Amazon MGM)

I reviewed Play Dirty, which is starting on Amazon Prime tomorrow, for Slant Magazine:

Donald Westlake’s Parker character, who he wrote about in many books under his penname Richard Stark, is a clever yet nasty machine of a criminal with a preternatural drive. That alone makes for a compelling screen character. But his brutishness doesn’t gel with the more comedic style preferred by Shane Black, director and co-writer of Play Dirty, a very loose adaptation of the Parker book series that keeps Westlake’s penchant for grubby violence but grafts it uneasily onto a more noble character whom the author wouldn’t recognize…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Orwell: 2+2=5’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Film-DocumentaryLeave a comment

The new documentary from Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) just had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

I reviewed the film for The Playlist:

Everyone has their own George Orwell and tends to think everyone else gets him wrong. As such, making a sprawling quasi-biographical documentary like “Orwell: 2+2=5” is a brave effort bound to exasperate people across the political spectrum. Even so, Raoul Peck’s repeated usage of the author’s words to buttress his own hazily presented view of current events makes this a less rigorous and engaging work than anything about Orwell should be…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Eddington’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment
Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal in ‘Eddington’ (A24)

My review of Eddington is at PopMatters:

A comic neo-Western with a bent for hyperreality and savage satirical viewpoint, Eddington is set in the kind of remote, raggedy New Mexico town where people are on a first-name basis, the scattered businesses look dusty and on the verge of bankruptcy, and more than two cars on the same block qualifies as a traffic jam. Like in many Westerns, the unresolved disputes of a small community are refracted through a looming showdown. Here, the confrontation is between Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) and Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), whose animus is ostensibly over masking policies being implemented as the story begins in May 2020…

Here’s the trailer: