Let the Fire Burn (2013; Jason Osder) GRADE: A- By Daniel Barnes Jason Osder’s powerful and disturbing Let the Fire Burn is part of a new wave of media collage documentaries that also includes Brett Morgen’s July 17, 1994 and Penny Lane’s Our Nixon. Rather than offer comforting […]
The Piano Teacher (2001; Michael Haneke) GRADE: B By Mike Dub Throughout his well-regarded and controversial career, Michael Haneke has specialized in disturbing violence. With unnerving precision, Haneke unfurls stories that build delicately to sudden, shocking explosions of blood and death. In The Piano Teacher, based on a novel […]
Jack and Jill (2011; Dennis Dugan) GRADE: D- By Daniel Barnes *Dared by Matt B. Over a decade ago in a college newspaper review of Little Nicky, I wrote, “Adam Sandler is truly his generation’s Jerry Lewis,” with everything great and terrible that statement implies.” It’s a fairly […]
By Daniel Barnes Fixed Bayonets! (1951; Sam Fuller) GRADE: B+ War movies are an indigenous territory for a director who liked to describe cinema as a battlefield. However, Fixed Bayonets! is a little more limited by its genre and commercial obligations. It’s about an outnumbered platoon given a […]
Le Silence de la Mer (1949; Jean-Pierre Melville) GRADE: A- By Mike Dub “This film has no pretension of solving the problem of Franco-German relations, for they cannot be solved while the barbarous Nazi crimes, committed with the complicity of the German people, remain fresh in men’s minds.” – […]
Kapo (1960; Gillo Pontecorvo) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes At the age of 17, I saw Schindler’s List in the movie theater along with everyone else and loved it along with everyone else. I never revisited the Spielberg film, but I remain somewhat suspicious of my affection for […]
