Bob Dylan Film ‘A Complete Unknown’ Is a Folk anti-Western
In wandering hero terms, Bob Dylan film A Complete Unknown is less a George Stevens’ Western like Shane and more an Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo – with guitars.
Chris Barsanti
Chris Barsanti is a freelance writer, editor, consultant, and aspiring flâneur. A member of the National Book Critics Circle and the Online Film Critics Society, he has been published in the Chicago Tribune, The Hollywood Reporter, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Publishers Weekly, and Rain Taxi Review of Books, among other outlets. His books include Six Seasons and a Movie: How Community Broke Television, Monty Python FAQ, The Ballot Box: 10 Presidential Elections That Changed American History, and The Sci-Fi Movie Guide.
The Future Isn’t What It Was
Glenn Adamson’s absorbing survey of futurology, A Century of Tomorrows, reveals that how societies predict the future says more about the era they’re living in.
Sundance Film Festival 2025 Is at a Crossroads
While the Sundance Film Festival still uplifts under-the-radar films in an increasingly challenging market, its future may be in doubt.
Alfred Hitchcock At the Peak of His Skill
Alfred Hitchcock: The Iconic Film Collection shows a master of restlessness and range at the peak of his skill and in the last full bloom of his career.
Mati Diop’s Documentary ‘Dahomey’ Complicates Colonialism
Mati Diop’s Dahomey documentary about the 2021 return of looted artworks to Benin looks more to the present and future than the past.
Filmmaker Lana Wilson Delves into the Psyche of Psychics
Lana Wilson’s soulful, patient, appropriately skeptical documentary takes psychics at their word but also peers behind the curtain in revealing ways.
Coppola’s ‘Megalopolis’ Is a Trivial Goof Pretending at Ambition
Francis Ford Coppola’s bonkers “fable” about the clash of dreams and cynicism, Megalopolis, has a potent but unfounded belief in its importance.
Neal Stephenson’s Thriller ‘Polostan’ Is a Wild Ride Through 1930s America
Neal Stephenson’s thrilling and slow-burn historical thriller Polostan presents the 1930s as a calamitous carnival ride building inexorably toward Hiroshima.
Quirky Comedy ‘Between the Temples’ Delights in the Unconventional Types
Nathan Silver’s 1970s-styled throwback Between the Temples is a comedy of people awkwardly fumbling toward purpose, faith, and meaning.
‘Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World’ Is a Stinging Comedy of Banal Chaos
Radu Jude’s gonzo satire of post-Soviet Romania, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, hits a sweet spot between Luis Buñuel and Béla Tarr.
‘Love Lies Bleeding’ Drips with Danger and Desire
Rose Glass drenches Love Lies Bleeding in sensation and texture, as if she dragged the film through pools of viscera on the floor of a Foley sound effects studio.
Christopher Hitchens and Fights Worth Having
You can smell the cigarette ash and Johnnie Walker Black Label on the pages of A Hitch in Time, a gleefully pugilistic posthumous Christopher Hitchens anthology.