Co-host of the Dare Daniel and Canon Fodder podcasts and a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle.
By Daniel Barnes The 38th annual Mill Valley Film Festival wrapped up last night with a gala screening of Suffragette, starring an on-the-scene Carey Mulligan, as well as Helena Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep. Suffragette is a legit awards season “contender,” so I’ll have ample opportunity to see […]
By Daniel Barnes I’ve reached the point of #MVFF38 where the buffet line of cinematic options that once seemed so appetizing has come to feel more like an indigestible eating challenge. Going into the final weekend of the festival, I have screened eighteen #MVFF38 films, and it feels […]
By Daniel Barnes By all accounts, the 38th annual Mill Valley Film Festival got off to a roaring start last weekend, highlighted by west coast premieres of Oscar favorites The Danish Girl and Spotlight, as well as on-the-scene appearances from I Smile Back star Sarah Silverman and festival […]
Partisan (2015; Ariel Kleiman) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes I’ve come to realize that I am abnormally fascinated by movies about cults, whether in the form of documentary (Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple), dramatic non-fiction (Patty Hearst), fiction loosely inspired by fact (The Sacrament), or […]
Finders Keepers (2015; Bryan Carberry and J. Clay Tweel) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes If there were an award for Best Documentary That You Least Expected to Be an Emotionally Involving, Lump-in-Your-Throat Examination of Grief, Ambition, Class Resentment, Imperious Fathers, Media Exploitation and Human Frailty, then this tabloid-ready […]
The Keeping Room (2015; Daniel Barber) GRADE: C- By Daniel Barnes Set in “The American South, 1865”, Daniel Barber’s pompous and lifeless The Keeping Room opens with a quote from the Civil War’s rampaging General Sherman: “War is cruelty.” Under Barber’s heavy-handed direction, it’s also tedious and inert, […]
