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 […]
Nowhere to Hide (2017; Zaradasht Ahmed) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, June 30, at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Politically charged, video vérité war documentaries have been appearing so frequently (and so similarly) in recent years that it becomes too easy for formalist aesthetes to callously […]
Okja (2017; Bong Joon Ho) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes “High-Energy Genre Subversion” More high-energy genre subversion from South Korean writer-director Bong Joon Ho (Snowpierecer; The Host; Memories of Murder), who this time uses a Spielberg-ian children’s fantasy template to bluntly satirize issues related to animal rights, environmental destruction and corporate […]
Harmonium (2017; Kôji Fukada) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes Over one year after winning the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes 2016, this repressed and implosive Japanese tragedy finally receives a limited stateside release. Mariko Tsutsui stars as Akié, unsatisfied small-town wife of a withdrawn machinist named Toshio (Kanji […]
God of War (2017; Gordon Chan) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, June 2, at the AMC Van Ness 14 in San Francisco. Hong Kong-born yeoman Chan delivers this war epic about Japanese pirates battling with Chinese armies in the 16th century. An unholy alliance forms between […]
