The Last Face (2017; Sean Penn) GRADE: D By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, July 28, at the Presidio in San Francisco, and on VOD services. This is every bit the self-righteous howler we all hoped and feared after its hostile reception at Cannes 2016. The Last Face makes the […]
Endless Poetry (2017; Alejandro Jodorowsky) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes Full disclosure: I have not seen Jodorowsky’s 2014 comeback film The Dance of Reality, the spiritual successor to this semi-autobiographical fantasy. Therefore, feel free to disregard my take on Endless Poetry accordingly. That previous film covered Jodorowsky’s youth in Chile, […]
Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story (2017; Daniel Raim) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, July 21 at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco, the Rialto Elmwood in Berkeley, the Rialto Sebastopol in Sebastopol and the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. When Andy […]
Dawson City: Frozen Time (2017; Bill Morrison) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, July 14, at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. A stunning work of curation from documentary filmmaker Morrison, a story of fortune, folly, film and fire preserved in permafrost. When the Yukon Gold Rush […]
The Ornithologist (2017; João Pedro Rodrigues) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, June 7, at the Landmark Clay in San Francisco and the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley. Un-tethered weirdness for the sake of weirdness from Portuguese writer-director Rodrigues (The Last Time I Saw Macao). The Ornithologist is […]
The Little Hours (2017; Jeff Baena) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes More high-concept comedy from Life After Beth director and I Heart Huckabees screenwriter Baena. This time, Baena serves up an oddball adaptation of a single story from Boccaccios’s 14th-century literary keystone The Decameron. Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza and Kate […]
