78/52 (2017; Alexandre O. Phillippe) GRADE: C- By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, October 27, at the Alamo Drafthouse at New Mission; now playing on VOD services. Superficial cinephilia from The People vs. George Lucas director Phillippe, a wide-ranging non-examination of the infamous shower scene from Psycho. The title of 78/52 refers to the […]
Dina (2017; Antonio Santini and Dan Sickles) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, October 20, at the Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco and the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley. Dina is the best documentary of the year so far, and also the most touching love story. Directors Santini […]
Ex Libris – The New York Public Library (2017; Frederick Wiseman) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, October 13, at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Somewhere in the middle of this 44th feature-length Frederick Wiseman documentary, a typically sprawling and reflective look at the New York […]
Chavela (2017; Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, October 6, at the Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco and the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley. An affectionate but rudimentary documentary introduction to Chavela Vargas, a singer virtually unknown to western audiences, but a groundbreaking […]
Lucky (2017; John Carroll Lynch) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, October 6, at the Landmark Embarcadero in San Francisco and the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley. Harry Dean Stanton headlines this tailor-made swan song, playing a nonagenarian coming to terms with his impending death in an oddball-filled desert […]
The Lost City of Cecil B. Demille (2017; Peter Brosnan) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes An amateurish but compelling documentary passion project from Brosnan, a low-level screenwriter who spent several decades obsessing over a piece of Hollywood history buried in the California sands. When Cecil B. DeMille filmed his […]
