Co-host of the Dare Daniel podcast and member of the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle.
The Most Dangerous Game (1932; Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes Based on a widely adapted 1924 short story by Richard Connell, the 1932 chiller The Most Dangerous Game is the film that producers Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper made right […]
How I Live Now (2013; Kevin MacDonald) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes This barely released drama from The Last King of Scotland director Kevin MacDonald is an odd-duck hybrid of a teenage summer romance and an apocalyptic nightmare. How I Live Now has some impressive ambitions, but mostly […]
The Chase (1966; Arthur Penn) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes In most if not all of his best roles, the Nebraska-born Marlon Brando was an easy avatar for everything anti-heroic about America. A Streetcar Named Desire and The Wild One boosted him to prominence as a post-WWII, hyper-sensitive […]
STEPMOM (1998; Chris Columbus) GRADE: D- By Daniel Barnes *Originally published on the Movie City USA blog on June 5, 2008. At the end of Chris Columbus’ mummified would-be tearjerker Stepmom, a credit reads, “In Loving Memory of Irene Columbus.” It’s a reference to the director’s mother, who […]
By Daniel Barnes *Originally published on the Movie City USA blog on August 21, 2007 [w/updated comments at the end] “He makes Hollywood feel better about itself.” -David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film I think that Thomson means this not just in the sense that Ron […]
“ARRESTED ADOLESCENCE IN PRE-APATOW AMERICA” (the silent era – 1996) By Professor Daniel Barnes Dub challenged me to create a course on “films about overgrown adolescents that don’t involve Judd Apatow.” Although Apatow got his start on TV in the early 1990s, his first film credits were on […]
