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 […]
Brainscan (1994; John Flynn) – Scare Daniel Podcast Episode 48 “The interactive trip to hell is paved with good intentions.” Trickster gods Daniel Barnes and Corky McDonnell open Scare Daniel season by reviewing charisma black hole Edward Furlong in Brainscan. Furlong stars in Brainscan as Michael Brower, a disaffected, […]
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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 […]
Chulas Fronteras (1976; Les Blank) GRADE: B+ Del Mero Corazón (1979; Maureen Gosling) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes Les Blank made a lot of music documentaries, but he was also one of the cinema’s great ethnographers. His delightful 1976 film Chulas Fronteras (Beautiful Borders) ostensibly covers culture-blending Tejano musicians along the […]
The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984; John Broderick) – Dare Daniel Podcast Episode 47 “They’ve got a real “I used to fuck guys like you in prison” vibe.” On this week’s episode, Sword of Uhrah possessor Corky McDonnell and Daniel Barnes the Tyrant review David Carradine in the […]
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Official Secrets (2019; Gavin Hood) GRADE: C- By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, September 13, at the Tower Theatre in Sacramento and the Varsity Theater in Davis. Keira Knightley stars as British whistleblower Katharine Gun in this shallow and painfully derivative biopic. The real Gun is a blonde, but those […]
