Daughters of the Dust (1991; Julie Dash) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes It took Julie Dash fifteen years to make Daughters of the Dust, and although it’s raw and occasionally impenetrable, it’s also the sort of breakthrough low-budget movie that should have been the stepping stone to a […]
Monday, November 21 I Am Not Your Negro (Dir.: Raoul Peck; GRADE: B+) Do not open until 2017. Demon (Dir.: Marcin Wrona; GRADE: B-) An admirable but only fitfully successful arthouse horror movie about a Polish wedding disrupted by a “dybbuk,” an angry and dissatisfied Jewish spirit that […]
Once again this year, I am devoting the entire week of Thanksgiving to catching up with the 2016 films that I missed, as well as re-watching some of my favorites of the year so far. We begin this annual cinematic orgy with an invocation to our deity: All […]
The Handmaiden (2016; Chan-wook Park) GRADE: A- By Daniel Barnes The best film of the year so far. Anyone who has followed me over the years knows my love-hate relationship with the act of taking notes during a film. My chief concern: it interferes with the act of […]
Being 17 (2016; André Téchiné) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, October 27, at the Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco and the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley. Pampered, white, tentatively out teen Damien (Kacey Mottet Klein, who also starred in the MVFF39 offering Keeper) gets driven to […]
A rainy weekend in Northern California put a damper on my MVFF39 weekend plans, so we’ll keep this final installment short and sweet. Simon Killer director Antonio Campos’ Christine (GRADE: B) tells the tragic story of Florida anchorwoman Christine Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall, in a perfectly mannered performance), who […]
