Greed (2020; Michael Winterbottom) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes *Opening Friday, March 6, at the Tower Theatre in Sacramento, as well as the Regal Natomas and Regal UA Laguna Village. The Adam McKay-ification of the global cinema-scape continues apace with this toothless, pseudo-intellectual satire. Director Michael Winterbottom once […]
Color Out of Space (2020; Richard Stanley) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes *Now playing in San Francisco and Berkeley. Something evil lurks in the forest in Color Out of Space, a mixed-bag adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft short story. Psychedelic horror meets lo-fi Spielberg-ian family fantasy in the […]
Pain and Glory (2019; Pedro Almodóvar) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes Opens on Friday, Nov. 8, at the Tower Theatre in Sacramento. For his 21st feature film, the great Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar once again reaches into the inkwell of semi-autobiography. In the quietly enchanting Pain and Glory, […]
Downtown ’81 (2000; Edo Bertoglio) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes Opens on Friday, Nov. 1, at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. You can’t slice this thing open without rattling off the rich backstory, so here we go. Swiss director Edo Bertoglio shot Downtown ’81 in the early […]
By Daniel Barnes MVFF42 is in the books. The 42nd annual Mill Valley Film Festival featured the usual mix of awards contenders, pseudo-indies and super-indies. New films from Martin Scorsese, Pedro Almodovar and Noah Baumbach made their Northern California debuts. Meanwhile, stars like Kristen Stewart and Olivia Wilde […]
Monos (2019; Alejandro Landres) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, October 4, at the Tower Theatre in Sacramento. Brazilian director Landres delivers a powerful experience with this story of child soldiers losing their minds and souls. Monos is equally raw and phantasmagoric, beautiful and ugly. Landres uses every […]
Dare Daniel & Corky to watch something terrible!
Now accepting unwatchable or underrated rom-com Dares.
