The Commune (2017; Thomas Vinterberg) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes Here comes an unexpected, Ang Lee-like pivot from Dogme 95 refugee Vinterberg. He follows up the blistering The Hunt and his vital version of Far from the Madding Crowd with this weightless and unworthy drama about Copenhagen communal […]
Hounds of Love (2017; Ben Young) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, May 12, at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Well, that was unpleasant. A stylish, squirm-inducing thriller from Australian first-timer Ben Young, Hounds of Love stars Ashleigh Cummings as Vicki Maloney, a rebellious teenager abducted […]
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 […]
