Transit (2019; Christian Petzold) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, May 3, at the Tower Theatre in Sacramento. “Thoughtful Yet Glacial” German director Christian Petzold follows up his 2015 critical darling Phoenix with another thoughtful yet glacial melodrama that flits around the margins of World War II. Transit is […]
Sunset (2019; László Nemes) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, April 26, at the Tower Theatre in Sacramento. Or: The Grand Budapest Hell. Nemes follows up his much-lauded debut film Son of Saul with this disturbing mystery set in pre-World War I Budapest. Of course, instead of the melancholy comedy […]
3 Faces (2019; Jafar Panahi) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, March 29, at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. 3 Faces is the fourth feature film from Iranian writer-director Jafar Panahi since 2010, the year that the Islamic Revolutionary Court sentenced him to house arrest and imposed […]
Screwball (2019; Billy Corben) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, March 29, at the 4 Star Theater in San Francisco. Less a documentary than a feature-length piece of click-bait, the true-crime sports movie Screwball offers the most superficial look imaginable at the steroids scandal surrounding Alex Rodriguez […]
Dragged Across Concrete (2019; S. Craig Zahler) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes *Now playing at the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley. Here comes another muscular but lumbering hunk of wheezing masculinity from Bone Tomahawk and Brawl in Cell Block 99 auteur S. Craig Zahler. This time, Vince Vaughn and Mel Gibson star […]
Babylon (1980; Franco Rosso) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes *Now playing in theaters in New York and Los Angeles. Released for the first time in the United States, Italian-born, English-raised director Franco Rosso’s Babylon follows the Jamaican-born, English-raised members of fictional sound system group Ital Lion. Fronted by the […]
