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 […]
Hard-working director Pablo Larraín, who showed The Club at last year’s Mill Valley Film Festival, traveled to the Bay Area again this year to debut two new movies. There is tomorrow’s closing night selection Jackie, an English-language biopic about Jackie Kennedy set in the immediate aftermath of the […]
Once again this year, the Mill Valley Film Festival got off to a splashy, star-heavy start, with west coast premieres of Arrival and La La Land attended by their respective stars Amy Adams and Emma Stone. My noble colleagues in the San Francisco Film Critics Circle even hobnobbed […]
Spa Night (2016; Andrew Ahn) GRADE: B- Danny Says (2016; Brendan Toller) GRADE: B- Cameraperson (2016; Kirsten Johnson) GRADE: A- By Daniel Barnes *All three films open in the Bay Area on Friday, September 30. Spa Night and Danny Says play at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco; Cameraperson plays at […]
White Girl (2016; Elizabeth Wood) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, September 16, at the AMC Van Ness 14 in San Francisco. The 1990s nostalgia trend in pop culture continues with this energetic throwback to Larry Clark’s Kids, Gregg Araki’s early work, and other benchmarks of casually […]
