Co-host of the Dare Daniel podcast and member of the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle.
Rich Hill (2014; Andrew Droz Palermo and Tracy Droz Tragos) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes *Now playing at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco and the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley. “Seething and Scowling” Rich Hill is a poor Missouri town about 75 minutes south of Kansas City, population […]
Freddy Got Fingered (2001; Tom Green) GRADE: D+ By Daniel Barnes “Annoy and Exhaust” The easiest and least honest way to dismiss the depressing grotesque of Tom Green’s Freddy Got Fingered is to insult the film solely for its wretched content. Yes, director-writer-star Green uses profoundly disturbing subjects […]
The End of Summer (1961; Yasujiro Ozu) GRADE: A- By Daniel Barnes “I was born, and here I am. That’s all that matters.” There is no more powerful a sequence of images in the cinema than a Yasujiro Ozu shot-reverse-shot. The great Japanese director was a master of […]
Forty Guns (1957; Sam Fuller) DANIEL’S TAKE: GRADE: B+ Sam Fuller only made a handful of westerns in his long career, and it’s a damn shame — the logistic and thematic possibilities of the genre give Fuller the perfect opportunity to indulge in his penchants for violent romanticism, […]
Shock Corridor (1963; Samuel Fuller) GRADE: A By Daniel Barnes In his 1963 film Pierrot le Fou, Jean-Luc Godard cast B-movie deity Sam Fuller as a Fuller-esque partygoer who declares, “Film is like a battleground: love, hate, action, death…In one word, EMOTION.” It’s ostensibly a Godard line, but […]
Chairman of the Board (1998; Alex Zamm) GRADE: F By Daniel Barnes It is quite common in vulgar juvenile comedies for the hero, usually a socially maladjusted and borderline deranged man-child, to be found irresistible by beautiful (usually blonde) women. Whether it is the lascivious skirt-chasing of Harpo […]
Dare Daniel & Corky to watch something terrible!
Now accepting unwatchable or underrated rom-com Dares.
