Co-host of the Dare Daniel and Canon Fodder podcasts and a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle.
Three on a Match (1932; Mervyn LeRoy) GRADE: B Safe in Hell (1931; William Wellman) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes Safe in Hell is one of the five films that William Wellman directed in 1931, along with The Public Enemy. Three on a Match is one of the […]
The Club (2016; Pablo Larraín) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes The Club is the followup film to director/co-writer Pablo Larraín’s Oscar-nominated No, and it’s another intimate and methodical take on a dark era in Chilean history. In this case, the film concerns the systematic cover-up of child sexual […]
Rams (2016; Grímur Hákonarson) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes A prime Best Foreign Language Film Oscar snub now getting dumped pre-Oscars into an Opera Plaza bandbox, Rams is still smarter and more surprising than most of the actual nominees in that category. In an isolated valley in Iceland, sheep […]
ANIMATED SHORT NOMINEES (from best to worst) World of Tomorrow (Don Herzfeldt; USA) We Can’t Live Without Cosmos (Konstantin Bronzit; Russia) I already raved about both of these films last October in my review of the 17th Annual Animation Show of Shows, so it’s no surprise that they’re […]
The Treasure (2015; Corneliu Porumboui) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes Another deadpan, three-headed Romanian history lesson from the director of 12:08 East of Bucharest, this time in the form of a treasure hunt. Struggling family man Costi (Toma Cuzin, who also figures prominently into the superior Aferim!, this […]
Lamb (2016; Ross Partridge) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes *Now playing at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Journeyman actor Ross Partridge writes, directs and stars in this restrained but discomforting drama. He plays David Lamb, a middle-aged man stuck in a downward spiral. Into his life comes […]
