Staying Vertical (2017; Alain Guiraudie) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes Alain Guiraudie’s self-contained, cryptic, borderline pornographic, Hitchcock-goes-homoerotic Stranger by the Lake was a jaw-dropping breakthrough in 2013/2014, even though it was the sixth feature film for the 52-year-old French writer-director. Staying Vertical is his highly anticipated follow-up, a […]
Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016; Werner Herzog) GRADE: C+ By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday in San Francisco, Berkeley, Monterey, San Jose and San Rafael. From the “repulsive” corridors at UCLA where scientists invented the Internet to the gleaming surfaces of Elon Musk’s rocket lab, […]
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011; Stephen Daldry) GRADE: D- By Daniel Barnes In the decade following the terrorist attacks on 9/11, Hollywood made a few films that attempted to recreate the events and aftermath of that day, most notably United 93 and World Trade Center. However, neither […]
Simon Sez (1999; Kevin Elders) GRADE: F By Daniel Barnes If you have ever attended an NBA game, then you have probably seen some of the pre-taped bits starring the home team’s players that get shown throughout the game on the arena Jumbotron. Players exhort the crowd to […]
Krippendorf’s Tribe (1998; Todd Holland) GRADE: F By Daniel Barnes *Rewritten from a Dare Daniel review published on The Barnesyard blog on November 14, 2005. Tim Conway’s legendary Dorf character was a bumbling Germanic dwarf who waddled his way through a series of faux-instructional videos in the 1980s […]
Godzilla (2014; Gareth Edwards) GRADE: C- By Mike Dub There is an interesting idea buried in the mediocrity of the latest revamp of Godzilla, directed by soon-to-be kazillionaire Gareth Edwards. Throughout the first three-quarters of the 123-minute film, Edwards teases his audience with momentary glimpses of the epic battle between […]
