Rich Hill (2014; Andrew Droz Palermo and Tracy Droz Tragos) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes *Now playing at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco and the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley. “Seething and Scowling” Rich Hill is a poor Missouri town about 75 minutes south of Kansas City, population […]
Forty Guns (1957; Sam Fuller) DANIEL’S TAKE: GRADE: B+ Sam Fuller only made a handful of westerns in his long career, and it’s a damn shame — the logistic and thematic possibilities of the genre give Fuller the perfect opportunity to indulge in his penchants for violent romanticism, […]
How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014; Dean DeBlois) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes “Decreased Stakes” Perhaps it is unfair to hold a film sequel up to the light of its predecessor, but How to Train Your Dragon 2 fairly groans with the strain of stretching a cute concept […]
Capricious Summer (1968; Jiri Menzel) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes For some reason, I watched Capricious Summer thinking it was the predecessor to writer-director-actor Jiri Menzel’s more polished Closely Watched Trains. Instead, this bawdy and cluttered but raggedly beautiful comedy was Menzel’s follow-up to Closely Watched Trains, which […]
Time Without Pity (1957; Joseph Losey) GRADE: B By Mike Dub By the time Joseph Losey released Time Without Pity in 1957, the “named” communist had been living in exile from HUAC for five years, and had made four films that were released under pseudonyms. His previous directing credit, […]
Let the Fire Burn (2013; Jason Osder) GRADE: A- By Daniel Barnes Jason Osder’s powerful and disturbing Let the Fire Burn is part of a new wave of media collage documentaries that also includes Brett Morgen’s July 17, 1994 and Penny Lane’s Our Nixon. Rather than offer comforting […]
