Official Secrets (2019; Gavin Hood) GRADE: C- By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, September 13, at the Tower Theatre in Sacramento and the Varsity Theater in Davis. Keira Knightley stars as British whistleblower Katharine Gun in this shallow and painfully derivative biopic. The real Gun is a blonde, but those […]
Godard mon Amour (2018; Michael Hazanavicius) GRADE: C By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, April 27, at the Landmark Embarcadero in San Francisco. Talk about Contempt! Academy Award-winning director Michael Hazanavicius (that looks wrong, but this is our world now, deal with it) delivers this annoyingly whimsical biopic about the relationship […]
The Idol (2016; Hany Abu-Assad) GRADE: C By Daniel Barnes Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad garnered Best Foreign Film Oscar nominations for his terrorist dramas Paradise Now and Omar, both mediocre efforts elevated by their presumed hot-button timeliness. Abu-Assad’s latest film The Idol is something different: an intentionally […]
I was not able to make it to the first night of the 37th annual Mill Valley Film Festival, which opened with the Tommy Lee Jones-directed western The Homesman, introduced live by star Hilary Swank. Although I had already screened about a half dozen films that will […]
Little Richard (2000; Robert Townsend) GRADE: D By Daniel Barnes *NOTE: This review was originally published on The Barnesyard in 2006. “Gentile, Quasi-Inspiring Treatment” Hollywood biopics are less filmed biographies than they are hagiographies. There is an assumption that every story should be “inspiring”, even if the subject […]
