Rich Hill (2014; Andrew Droz Palermo and Tracy Droz Tragos) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes *Now playing at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco and the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley. “Seething and Scowling” Rich Hill is a poor Missouri town about 75 minutes south of Kansas City, population […]
Freddy Got Fingered (2001; Tom Green) GRADE: D+ By Daniel Barnes “Annoy and Exhaust” The easiest and least honest way to dismiss the depressing grotesque of Tom Green’s Freddy Got Fingered is to insult the film solely for its wretched content. Yes, director-writer-star Green uses profoundly disturbing subjects […]
The End of Summer (1961; Yasujiro Ozu) GRADE: A- By Daniel Barnes “I was born, and here I am. That’s all that matters.” There is no more powerful a sequence of images in the cinema than a Yasujiro Ozu shot-reverse-shot. The great Japanese director was a master of […]
America, America (1963; Elia Kazan) GRADE: C By Daniel Barnes Throughout his long career, Elia Kazan was often defined by his work with actors. A professional stage actor and director before becoming an award-winning Hollywood filmmaker, Kazan was one of the foremost cinematic proponents of the “Actor’s Studio” […]
Forty Guns (1957; Sam Fuller) DANIEL’S TAKE: GRADE: B+ Sam Fuller only made a handful of westerns in his long career, and it’s a damn shame — the logistic and thematic possibilities of the genre give Fuller the perfect opportunity to indulge in his penchants for violent romanticism, […]
Shock Corridor (1963; Samuel Fuller) GRADE: A By Daniel Barnes In his 1963 film Pierrot le Fou, Jean-Luc Godard cast B-movie deity Sam Fuller as a Fuller-esque partygoer who declares, “Film is like a battleground: love, hate, action, death…In one word, EMOTION.” It’s ostensibly a Godard line, but […]
