Co-host of the Dare Daniel and Canon Fodder podcasts and a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle.
Tangerine (2015; Sean Baker) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes A relatively minor up-all-night comedy elevated to the status of a significant breakthrough by casting transgender performers in the roles of transgender prostitutes, and by refraining from ever psychoanalyzing or judging them. Meanwhile, harsh judgment gets rightly reserved for […]
Cartel Land (2015; Matthew Heineman) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes Beyond the usual genre themes of heroism and sacrifice, the greatest war films tend to project a sense of an intractable and ultimately unwinnable situation. Whether it be WWI in All Quiet on the Western Front or WWII […]
A Poem is a Naked Person (1974/2015; Les Blank) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes Documentarian Les Blank (Burden of Dreams) started shooting A Poem is a Naked Person in 1972 and completed it in 1974. However, the film was held up for decades by legal issues, and it’s […]
By Daniel Barnes and Mike Dub DANIEL: As I’ve stated many times, the real purpose of these festivals is to fill in some of my more glaring cinematic blind spots. In my festival intro, I mentioned that “I came a little bit late to the Dardenne brothers party,” […]
Magic Mike XXL (2015; Gregory Jacobs) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes Steven Soderbergh’s male stripper drama Magic Mike became a left-field hit in 2012, grossing over $100 million at the domestic box office against a budget of $7 million. Magic Mike cemented the star power of Channing Tatum, […]
The Son (2002; Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes In my festival intro, I mentioned that actor Jérémie Renier served as the Dardenne brothers’ “on-again, off-again muse,” a blonde-mopped personification of moral turpitude and financial desperation in modern-day Belgium. That argument still holds water, especially […]
