Lu Over the Wall (2018; Masaaki Yuasa) GRADE: C By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, May 11, at the Landmark Embarcadero in San Francisco and the Landmark California in Berkeley. This rare stinker from animation importer GKIDS offers echoes of Studio Ghibli classics like My Neighbor Totoro and Ponyo, but contains little of […]
Mary and the Witch’s Flower (2018; Hiromasa Yonebayashi) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, January 19, and at the Palladio 16 Cinemas in Folsom and the AMC Van Ness in San Francisco. Studio Ghibli veteran Hiromasa Yonebayashi adapts Mary Stewart’s 1971 children’s novel The Little Broomstick into this charming, […]
Birdboy: The Forgotten Children (2017; Pedro Rivero and Alberto Vázquez) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, January 12, at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. This dark, bleak, Spanish-language animated fable premiered in 2015. However, it only now makes an American debut thanks to GKIDS, an essential distribution […]
The Breadwinner (2017; Nora Twomey) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, December 1, at the Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco and the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley. The Secret of Kells co-directory Twomey makes her solo feature debut with this animated story of an Afghanistan family barely surviving under […]
My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (2017; Dash Shaw) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes Jason Schwartzman voices another Max Fischer-esque, high school fabulist in this unique but strangely aggravating animated feature, an odd blend of crude hand-drawn animation and sophisticated Photoshop. Like the 34-year-old debut feature […]
Phantom Boy (2016; Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday at the Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco and the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley. The New York-based independent distributor GKIDS is becoming as sure a sign of quality animated cinema as Pixar or […]
