Cheatin’ (2015; Bill Plympton) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes In a genre overwhelmingly dominated by major studios, nine-digit budgets, digital animation, wisecracking animals, A-list voice casts, and costly pop song licensing rights, animator Bill Plympton remains an iconoclast. Cheatin’, which premiered at Slamdance 2014 but is only now […]
Man from Reno (2015; Dave Boyle) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes *Opens today at the Sundance Kabuki in San Francisco. This subdued, almost ephemeral, bilingual murder mystery seems designed more for fans of detective fiction than for film noir nuts. That said, it still possesses a sly potency. […]
White God (2015; Kornel Mundruczo) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes *Opens today at the Embarcadero Center Cinemas in San Francisco. A striking film from its opening shots of wild dogs stampeding through the streets of an abandoned city, Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo’s White God is one of the […]
Danny Collins (2015; Dan Fogelman) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes “Doing Al Pacino” It feels as though Al Pacino has been “doing Al Pacino” in movies ever since he won the Oscar for 1992’s Scent of a Woman, where he played the blind, brash, brazenly offensive Lieutenant Colonel […]
The Wrecking Crew (1996/2008/2015; Denny Tedesco) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes In case you didn’t know a loosely knit group of roughly two dozen Southern California session musicians played on almost every classic pop song and TV theme you ever loved. Dubbed The Wrecking Crew, they were Phil […]
Assault on the Pay Train (1962; Roberto Farias) Grade: B+ By Mike Dub Almost every heist movie ever made invests half its time depicting the expertise and professionalism involved in the detailed planning of the caper, then leads to an ostensibly heart-pounding climax in which the crime is […]
