Co-host of the Dare Daniel and Canon Fodder podcasts and a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle.
Ida (2014; Pawel Pawlikowski) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes “Understated and Carefully Controlled” Nominated for Best Cinematography and winner of Best Foreign Film at this year’s Academy Awards, the bone-dry, black-and-white Ida is the fifth film from Polish writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski, but it’s just his second in the […]
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011; Stephen Daldry) GRADE: D- By Daniel Barnes In the decade following the terrorist attacks on 9/11, Hollywood made a few films that attempted to recreate the events and aftermath of that day, most notably United 93 and World Trade Center. However, neither […]
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974; Martin Scorsese) GRADE: A- By Daniel Barnes In the recent Australian chiller The Babadook, Essie Davis plays a widowed mother who feels trapped by parenthood. She eventually becomes a greater threat to her screeching son than the titular monster. I thought about […]
Timbuktu (2014; Abderrahmane Sissako) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes This Best Foreign Film Oscar nominee from Mauritanian director Sissako (Bamako) looks at life in an African city forcibly placed under the rule of a new but brutal jihadist regime. Before your eyes glaze over and you start dreaming […]
The Duke of Burgundy (2015; Peter Strickland) GRADE: A- By Daniel Barnes “Luxurious and Layered” This luxurious and layered psycho-sexual drama is director Peter Strickland’s follow-up to his hypnotically stylish 2012 mind-fuck Berberian Sound Studio, which followed the breakdown of a mousy sound engineer working on a gory […]
Simon Sez (1999; Kevin Elders) GRADE: F By Daniel Barnes If you have ever attended an NBA game, then you have probably seen some of the pre-taped bits starring the home team’s players that get shown throughout the game on the arena Jumbotron. Players exhort the crowd to […]
