Co-host of the Dare Daniel and Canon Fodder podcasts and a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle.
The New Girlfriend (2015; Francois Ozon) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes *Opens today at the Clay Theatre in San Francisco, the Piedmont Theatre in Oakland, the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, and the Landmark Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley. Popular and prolific French auteur Francois […]
Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (2015; Alex Gibney) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes *Opens today at the Embarcadero Center Cinemas in San Francisco and the California Theatre in Berkeley. There are many alleyways in the life of Apple CEO Steve Jobs that prolific documentarian Alex Gibney […]
The Tribe (2015; Miroslav Slaboshpitsky) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes The opening titles say it all: “This film is in sign language. There are no translations, no subtitles, no voice-over.” A conceptually unique and visually compelling Ukrainian import comprised of only 34 shots, The Tribe follows the arrival […]
We Come as Friends (2015; Hubert Sauper) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes Nope, not the Zac Efron-goes-EDM drama. Instead, Darwin’s Nightmare director Hubert Sauper writes, directs and edits this rambling, sneakily compelling documentary about modern-day colonialism in Sudan. This adventurous Frenchman also pilots an ultralight plane of his […]
Fort Tilden (2015; Sarah Violet-Bliss and Charles Rogers) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes *Opens tomorrow, August 14, at the AMC Metreon 16 in San Francisco. Fort Tilden also premieres tomorrow on VOD services. “We fucked up summer.” The existential crises of the young, privileged, bored, white, female, and […]
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 […]
