The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014; Marc Webb) GRADE: C- By Daniel Barnes It is so difficult to relay in writing what doesn’t work about both The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and its 2011 predecessor. Both films rely heavily on tropes and clichés that worked for superhero movies in the […]
Strange Days (1995; Kathryn Bigelow) GRADE: C By Daniel Barnes One of the fascinating and unfortunate things about director Kathryn Bigelow is her natural and often exploitative appropriation of the male gaze. As I wrote in this 2010 SN&R column on Bigelow, “Her great cinematic obsession is the […]
The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden (2014; Daniel Geller, Dayna Goldfine) GRADE: B By Mike Dub Most people, at least a few times in their lives, have had the urge to abandon society and move to some uninhabited island and live off the land in peaceful isolation. […]
Bad Timing (1980; Nicolas Roeg) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes There is nothing easily definable about Nicolas Roeg’s perverse romance Bad Timing, right down to that mysterious title. Bad Timing is a film about lies, distortions, and manipulation, not anything as fickle and uncalculated as “bad timing.” The […]
The Most Dangerous Game (1932; Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes Based on a widely adapted 1924 short story by Richard Connell, the 1932 chiller The Most Dangerous Game is the film that producers Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper made right […]
How I Live Now (2013; Kevin MacDonald) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes This barely released drama from The Last King of Scotland director Kevin MacDonald is an odd-duck hybrid of a teenage summer romance and an apocalyptic nightmare. How I Live Now has some impressive ambitions, but mostly […]
