Three (2016; Johnnie To) GRADE: A- By Daniel Barnes The best film of 2016 so far. Fresh off a failed raid, a hard-boiled Hong Kong cop (Louis Koo) brings a wounded prisoner (Wallace Chung) into the hospital for emergency surgery and an illegal frame-up. They get tended by […]
Tickled (2016; David Farrier and Dylan Reeve) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday at the Landmark Embarcadero in San Francisco and the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley. In a crowded marketplace for documentaries, it’s easy to overpraise bold formal and visual ambitions, and easy to overlook a more […]
Les Cowboys (2016; Thomas Bidegain) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes Long-time Jacques Audiard collaborator Thomas Bidegain makes his directorial debut with this steely-eyed odd duck. It’s precisely the kind of terse tangle of cultural collisions and heavyhanded genre tropes that you would expect from the man who co-wrote […]
The Fits (2016; Anna Rose Holmer) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday at the Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco. A scrappy and big-hearted brawler of a film, but one without any real fighting spirit or punching power (OK, that’s enough with the boxing metaphors). First-timer Holmer […]
The Diary of a Chambermaid (2016; Benoît Jacquot) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, June 17, at the Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco and the Rialto Elmwood in Berkeley. Lea Seydoux stars in this fourth film adaptation of Octave Mirbeau’s infamous 1900 novel (Renoir and Buñuel […]
Chevalier (2016; Athina Rachel Tsangari) GRADE: C By Daniel Barnes Chevalier opens with long shots of figures struggling through the surf, oily blobs lurching from the ocean onto the beach like primordial creatures. Back on their Greek luxury liner, they shed their wet suits to reveal those most […]
