The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki (2017; Juho Kuosmanen) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes Shot in a hazy and washed-out black-and-white, and so slight and unassuming that it barely qualifies as a movie, this true story about the titular Finnish boxer training for the fight […]
My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (2017; Dash Shaw) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes Jason Schwartzman voices another Max Fischer-esque, high school fabulist in this unique but strangely aggravating animated feature, an odd blend of crude hand-drawn animation and sophisticated Photoshop. Like the 34-year-old debut feature […]
The Assignment (2017; Walter Hill) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes The devolution of the Hollywood mainstream from a relatively low-frills genre film factory into soulless purveyors of perversely over-branded pap cleanly overlaps with the career arc of writer-director Walter Hill. Over forty-plus years in the industry, Hill went […]
Staying Vertical (2017; Alain Guiraudie) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes Alain Guiraudie’s self-contained, cryptic, borderline pornographic, Hitchcock-goes-homoerotic Stranger by the Lake was a jaw-dropping breakthrough in 2013/2014, even though it was the sixth feature film for the 52-year-old French writer-director. Staying Vertical is his highly anticipated follow-up, a […]
My Life as a Zucchini (2017; Claude Barras) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes Spoiler alert: this film is not about a little boy who transforms into a zucchini. That goofball title and the Pop Art-meets-Cubist character designs do nothing to prepare you for this relatively realistic and fairly […]
ANIMATED SHORT NOMINEES (arranged from best to worst) 1. Piper (Alan Barillaro; USA) 2. Pear Cider and Cigarettes (Robert Valley; Canada) These are the only two films in either program that rise above the squishy middle, and they couldn’t be more different. Pixar’s wordless, 6-minute Piper is a […]
