Tag: true crime

Reader’s Corner: ‘Murderland’

On By chrisbarsantiIn BooksLeave a comment

I reviewed Caroline Fraser’s new book Murderland: Crime and Bloodlist in the Time of Serial Killers for the Fall 2025 edition of Rain Taxi Review of Books:

We don’t live in a time when a single book can create a galvanizing moment, but if we did, Caroline Fraser’s Murderland could be a Silent Spring for serial killing. Ostensibly about the surge of lurid slayers who plagued the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s and ’80s, her narrative is also about the landscape that birthed them. In the award-winning Fraser’s hands, the region’s depressive atmospherics of gloomy rain-sodden forests and isolated company towns serve as backdrop to something even larger: the crime which gave rise to the crimes…

TV Room: ‘The Invisible Pilot’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film-Documentary, streamingLeave a comment

The new HBO documentary miniseries The Invisible Pilot starts on Monday.

My review ran at The Playlist:

Some jobs do not prepare you for much of anything else. Work as a barista and you will know how to make a great latte, perhaps with that cute little leaf in the foam, but that is it. Other jobs provide more marketable skills. The buzzy new three-episode HBO documentary series “The Invisible Pilot,” for example, reveals that being a crop duster was excellent training for anybody looking to set up shop as a drug smuggler. The skill sets are roughly the same—flying heavy loads, often in bad weather, low to the ground, and landing on rough ground—only, when the cargo is illegal drugs, the pay is quite a bit better…

Here’s the trailer:

TV Room: ‘Night Stalker’

On By chrisbarsantiIn streaming, TelevisionLeave a comment

My review of the new Netflix true-crime series Night Stalker ran at Slant:

Netflix’s Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer, a four-part series about Richard Ramirez, the sadistic serial rapist and murderer who terrorized the citizens of Los Angeles and San Francisco in the mid-1980s, is dramatically satisfying but structurally rote. Director Tiller Russell glosses the story over with more cinematic panache than you might see on 48 Hours, all straight from the Southland-noir template, including eerie tracking shots of a full moon behind dark palm trees and Michael Mann-ish overhead views of nighttime highways. But despite a story filled with big-hearted good guys, a depraved villain, and an edge-of-your-seat finale, the series feels overly pat and formulaic…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Strong Island’

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

One night in April 1992, Yancy Ford’s brother William was shot dead. William was unarmed and black, the man believed to have shot him was white. Charges were never filed. In the documentary Strong Island, Ford excavates the layers of memory, guilt, and anger that covered this family-shattering crime for so many years.

Strong Island premieres on Netflix and in some theaters this Friday. My review is at The Playlist:

There’s an immediacy to Yance Ford’s chilling investigation Strong Island that runs the spectrum from bracing to uncomfortable. Even though Ford comes at the subject sideways, not immediately clueing you into what story is being told, there is nothing remote about how things begin…

Here’s the trailer:

New in Theaters: Franco Behind Bars in ‘True Story’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

Jonah Hill and James Franco get at the ‘True Story’ (Fox Searchlight)

 

True_Story_posterIt isn’t every day that you see Jonah Hill and James Franco in a film and neither one of them is mugging up a storm. True Story is a long-gestating true-crime piece opening this week in which Hill plays a reporter and Franco a (maybe) murderer.

My review is at Film Racket:

Between the cold-case podcast Serial and Robert Durst’s wink-wink tease on The Jinx, true crime stories in the did-he-or-didn’t-he vein are having what they call a cultural moment. So it would seem time to tell the real story of journalist Michael Finkel’s borderline disturbing relationship with accused family murderer Christian Longo. If you can do it with movie stars, all the better. But the tentative and moody True Story doesn’t have the synapse-sparking fizz that marks the best true crime stories. It squanders more of the opportunities packed into this tale of worlds colliding than it takes advantage of…

Here is the trailer:

New in Theaters: ‘West of Memphis’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

westofmemphis-posterOn Christmas Day, amidst all the other award-hopeful films, one documentary that’s small in budget but massive in scope opens in limited release; it’s well worth seeking out:

Without Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s trilogy of Paradise Lost documentaries, most of the world would never have heard of the West Memphis Three. But when all is said and done, Amy Berg’s impactful film might ultimately stand the test of time as the true document of the case and its hair-raising implications for justice in America…

My full review is at Film Journal International.

The trailer is here: