American Animals (2018; Bart Layton) GRADE: C By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, June 8, at the AMC Kabuki 8 and the Landmark Embarcadero Center Cinemas in San Francisco. Writer-director Bart Layton follows up his 2012 debut The Imposter, a documentary with dramatic tendencies about an older man pretending to […]
Lu Over the Wall (2018; Masaaki Yuasa) GRADE: C By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, May 11, at the Landmark Embarcadero in San Francisco and the Landmark California in Berkeley. This rare stinker from animation importer GKIDS offers echoes of Studio Ghibli classics like My Neighbor Totoro and Ponyo, but contains little of […]
Let the Sunshine In (2018; Claire Denis) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, May 4, at the Landmark Clay in San Francisco and the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley. Claire Denis makes her first feature film since 2013’s Bastards with this beguiling romantic dramedy about a middle-aged artist who longs to […]
Cold Water (1994; Olivier Assayas) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, May 4, at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Unreleased and unavailable for decades, writer-director Olivier Assayas‘ harsh coming-of-age story Cold Water gets the 4K treatment. It arrives just in time to feed my growing obsession with the filmmaker. […]
Godard mon Amour (2018; Michael Hazanavicius) GRADE: C By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, April 27, at the Landmark Embarcadero in San Francisco. Talk about Contempt! Academy Award-winning director Michael Hazanavicius (that looks wrong, but this is our world now, deal with it) delivers this annoyingly whimsical biopic about the relationship […]
The Endless (2018; Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, April 20, at the Alamo Drafthouse New Mission in San Francisco and the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley. Another super-intriguing, shoegazing, almost-there slice of genre revision from the directors of Spring. Directing partners Justin Benson […]
