The Assignment (2017; Walter Hill) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes The devolution of the Hollywood mainstream from a relatively low-frills genre film factory into soulless purveyors of perversely over-branded pap cleanly overlaps with the career arc of writer-director Walter Hill. Over forty-plus years in the industry, Hill went […]
Staying Vertical (2017; Alain Guiraudie) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes Alain Guiraudie’s self-contained, cryptic, borderline pornographic, Hitchcock-goes-homoerotic Stranger by the Lake was a jaw-dropping breakthrough in 2013/2014, even though it was the sixth feature film for the 52-year-old French writer-director. Staying Vertical is his highly anticipated follow-up, a […]
My Life as a Zucchini (2017; Claude Barras) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes Spoiler alert: this film is not about a little boy who transforms into a zucchini. That goofball title and the Pop Art-meets-Cubist character designs do nothing to prepare you for this relatively realistic and fairly […]
ANIMATED SHORT NOMINEES (arranged from best to worst) 1. Piper (Alan Barillaro; USA) 2. Pear Cider and Cigarettes (Robert Valley; Canada) These are the only two films in either program that rise above the squishy middle, and they couldn’t be more different. Pixar’s wordless, 6-minute Piper is a […]
By Daniel Barnes When you add up my weekly reviews in the Sacramento News & Review, my work here at E Street Film Society, and my contributions to other print and online publications, I penned nearly 200 published movie reviews in 2016. Whatever the results, I worked hard […]
A final awards season observation before we flush this turd of a year down the toilet: Critics groups and other end-of-year awards-giving organizations don’t honor the best so much as they honor the most. In other words, the award for best acting is really an award for the […]
