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Chris Barsanti
Tomatometer-approved critic
A freelance writer for over two decades, Chris Barsanti has covered movies for websites and magazines the world over. He's even written a few books, like 'Filmology,' 'The Sci-Fi Movie Guide,' and the 'Eyes Wide Open' annual film guide series.
http://chrisbarsanti.net/
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Radical Wolfe (2023) |
Richard Dewey’s Tom Wolfe doc celebrates his journalistic bravery but doesn’t emulate it. - The Playlist
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| Posted Sep 13, 2023
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After Hours (1985) |
In Martin Scorsese’s 1985 art punk gem, a yuppie lost in SoHo is terrorized not so much by the late-night characters but by the city itself. - PopMatters
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| Posted Jul 17, 2023
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The Lesson (2023) |
It’s a testament to the skills of the cast and filmmakers that The Lesson’s mysteries, while easy to foretell, are worth unraveling. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jun 30, 2023
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The League (2023) |
At its most engrossing, the film vibrantly sketches out the historical roots of the Negro baseball leagues. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jun 30, 2023
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Asteroid City (2023) |
The film is a dryly comedic bricolage of mid-century Americana and postwar anxieties with only the lightest dusting of plot. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jun 13, 2023
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Against All Enemies (2023) |
Thundering, anxiety-inducing... - The Playlist
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| Posted Jun 09, 2023
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Lynch/Oz (2022) |
Alexandre O. Philippe’s essay film is both dead-serious about its subjects and playfully exploratory. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted May 26, 2023
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Master Gardener (2022) |
A schizoid presentation that delivers moments of gutsy idiosyncrasy but few characters whose problems and reactions feel connected to familiar human emotions. - PopMatters
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| Posted May 12, 2023
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Somewhere in Queens (2022) |
Many of the character actors occasionally elevate the film above some of the more clichéd family humor. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Apr 16, 2023
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Air (2023) |
An argument for the proposition that Ben Affleck is the last Hollywood filmmaker with broad, middle-of-the-road appeal. - PopMatters
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| Posted Apr 03, 2023
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John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) |
Despite an egregious running time and padded plot, the (maybe) conclusion to Keanu Reeves’ action series still serves up some of the original’s delightful weird. - PopMatters
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| Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Revoir Paris (2022) |
A quietly gutting ode to Paris’s resilience in the post-Bataclan era.
- Slant Magazine
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| Posted Mar 02, 2023
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The Night of the 12th (2022) |
The film wants for deeper characterizations or a closer detailing of criminal procedure. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Feb 28, 2023
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Inside (2023) |
Whether or not Vasilis Katsoupis’s film achieves escape velocity from genre limitations though overt sociopolitical commentary is questionable. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Feb 22, 2023
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Manodrome (2023) |
While John Trengrove’s skill is apparent in the slow build of tension, it also stands out in the arguably more impressive way that he holds Ralphie’s view of the world separate from that of the film’s. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Feb 22, 2023
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BlackBerry (2023) |
By emphasizing the people in its tech tale, and the comedic possibilities in their mismatch, rather than the gee-whiz factor, Matt Johnson frees BlackBerry from the need to convince its audience how important the invention at its center was. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Feb 20, 2023
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Love in the Time of Fentanyl (2022) |
It is not the documentary’s duty to provide answers to a problem for which few experts have a consensus solution. But the film’s lack of a forward-looking vision ultimately makes an already bleak situation appear even more dire. - The Playlist
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| Posted Feb 14, 2023
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Pacifiction (2022) |
Stays in a muzzy middle where fact and fantasy are practically indistinguishable. - PopMatters
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| Posted Feb 14, 2023
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Shortcomings (2023) |
Shortcomings is a mostly comedic but fitfully insightful examination of a character type familiar to indie cinema: the solipsistic guy who fills the gap left by emotional underdevelopment with intense opinions delivered at bad times. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jan 26, 2023
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You Hurt My Feelings (2023) |
The film deals forthrightly with the question of purpose and whether or not it can be found in a career. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jan 25, 2023
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Cat Person (2023) |
Starting out as a dark and somewhat unknowable comedy of manners about male toxicity, Cat Person turns into a domestic thriller so absurd that it feels like another of Margot’s daydreams. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jan 24, 2023
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AUM: The Cult at the End of the World (2023) |
...cool, methodical, and unsettling - The Playlist
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| Posted Jan 21, 2023
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The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989) |
Stranger than Terry Gilliam’s 1990s hits and less aggressive than his later work, this glorious fantasy was the last time his talents fully flowered. - PopMatters
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| Posted Jan 19, 2023
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Living (2022) |
Rages ever so properly against the dying of the light. - PopMatters
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| Posted Dec 23, 2022
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Babylon (2022) |
Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt’s characters burn the candle at both ends in Damien Chazelle’s rollicking and ridiculous epic cautionary tale. - PopMatters
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| Posted Dec 16, 2022
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White Noise (2022) |
Pop art fever dream of catastrophe and consumerism. - PopMatters
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| Posted Dec 10, 2022
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There There (2022) |
A funny and cleverly linked series of dramedic vignettes that doesn’t try to hide the stitchwork imposed by pandemic-period production restrictions. Instead, the film leans into them... - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Nov 13, 2022
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The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) |
Pairs a crisp dramatic clarity and whistling-past-the-graveyard comedic tone with an underlying melancholy, the latter being a somewhat newer development in McDonagh’s work. - Eyes Wide Open
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| Posted Nov 04, 2022
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Good Night Oppy (2022) |
Ryan White’s documentary is cute to a fault and filled with a rapturously uncomplicated glee about the joys of exploration. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Oct 31, 2022
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Retrograde (2022) |
While Heineman has produced an epic story, he tells it primarily through a small group of people caught up in the storm toss of history. - PopMatters
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| Posted Sep 20, 2022
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Escape from Kabul (2022) |
Terse, painfully precise. A close-quarters kind of war film that moves in tight and leaves little room to breathe. - The Playlist
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| Posted Sep 19, 2022
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See How They Run (2022) |
A whodunnit romp in the key of Wes Anderson. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 13, 2022
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Return to Seoul (2022) |
Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul quickly blooms as a study in contrasts, sublimely juxtaposing character and culture. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 09, 2022
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A Compassionate Spy (2022) |
The suggestion that Ted Hall’s actions were that of simple and pure heroism leaves Steve James’s documentary in tension with the more nuanced view that Hall seemed to have of himself. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 07, 2022
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The Story of Film: A New Generation (2022) |
The films collected in A New Generation speak for themselves even when they don’t necessarily slot neatly into Mark Cousins’s curlicue thinking. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Sep 07, 2022
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Nightclubbing: The Birth of Punk Rock in NYC (2022) |
...a solid and necessary addition to the underground music documentary canon. - PopMatters
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| Posted Aug 10, 2022
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Nope (2022) |
The film’s fantastical meta-commentaries don’t completely cohere but have a winning go-for-it audaciousness. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jul 20, 2022
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The Gray Man (2022) |
The Gray Man is a noisy, flashy spectacle that piles clichés atop ludicrous plotting and sprinkles it all with half-funny quips. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jul 14, 2022
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The Forgiven (2021) |
Predictable and yet compelling, due largely to the stark dialogue, icy humor, and McDonagh’s anti-romantic viewpoint. - PopMatters
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| Posted Jun 30, 2022
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Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1988) |
Economic anxiety and racial demagoguery make a toxic brew. - PopMatters
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| Posted Jun 17, 2022
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American Pain (2022) |
A bruising and vital piece of film journalism - The Playlist
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| Posted Jun 16, 2022
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Cha Cha Real Smooth (2022) |
Cooper Raiff’s romantic comedy about a likeable slacker falling for an older woman has a bullying need to be liked. - PopMatters
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| Posted Jun 13, 2022
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The Janes (2022) |
A disarmingly cool and matter-of-fact yet utterly crucial documentary about some of the most daring, radical, and largely unsung heroes ever put onscreen. - Eyes Wide Open
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| Posted Jun 06, 2022
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My Imaginary Country (2022) |
Patricio Guzmán’s documentary leaves open the possibility of a future for Chileans that isn’t beholden to the trauma of history. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Jun 02, 2022
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Hold Your Fire (2021) |
The film’s aesthetic approach is purposeful, echoing the us-or-them sentiment held by both groups aiming guns at the other. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted May 16, 2022
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The Northman (2022) |
A revenge thriller with an elevated horror heart and an anthropologists eye for detail and ritual. But despite the layered imagination that went into recreating this ancient world, it is still the most conventional film yet from Eggers. - PopMatters
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| Posted Apr 13, 2022
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Donbass (2018) |
A comedy in the sense that the absurdist plays of Eugene Ionesco are comedies. - The Playlist
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| Posted Mar 30, 2022
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Master (2022) |
The subtle microaggressions in Mariama Diallo’s Master say far more about the sorry-not-sorry state of racial consciousness in America than the witch does. - PopMatters
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| Posted Mar 23, 2022
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Windfall (2022) |
Windfall has a difficult time landing on the right tone or getting a bead on its characters. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Mar 18, 2022
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The Outfit (2022) |
The Outfit is a dapper, twist-filled crime story that relies more on dialogue than gunplay to move the action. - Slant Magazine
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| Posted Mar 15, 2022
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