My Life as a Zucchini (2017; Claude Barras) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes Spoiler alert: this film is not about a little boy who transforms into a zucchini. That goofball title and the Pop Art-meets-Cubist character designs do nothing to prepare you for this relatively realistic and fairly […]
Once again this year, the Mill Valley Film Festival got off to a splashy, star-heavy start, with west coast premieres of Arrival and La La Land attended by their respective stars Amy Adams and Emma Stone. My noble colleagues in the San Francisco Film Critics Circle even hobnobbed […]
Phantom Boy (2016; Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday at the Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco and the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley. The New York-based independent distributor GKIDS is becoming as sure a sign of quality animated cinema as Pixar or […]
April and the Extraordinary World (2016; Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes Pure enjoyment, but then I’ve always been in the bag for humanist sci-fi, lizards wearing robot armor, unusual and meticulous production design, and adventure stories where one of the heroes is a […]
Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet (2015; Roger Allers et al.) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes An animated passion project shepherded to the screen by Salma Hayek, the hugely promising Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet arrives in theaters as a decidedly mixed bag. Gorgeous sequences of highly individualized, hand-drawn animation from […]
When Marnie Was There (2015; Hiromasa Yonebayashi) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes Hand-drawn animation stalwarts Studio Ghibli shut down production late August following the retirement of guiding light Hiyao Miyazaki. Therefore, When Marnie Was There may be the last feature film we see under the Ghibli label in […]
