Once again this year, I am devoting the entire week of Thanksgiving to catching up with the 2016 films that I missed, as well as re-watching some of my favorites of the year so far. We begin this annual cinematic orgy with an invocation to our deity: All […]
Hard-working director Pablo Larraín, who showed The Club at last year’s Mill Valley Film Festival, traveled to the Bay Area again this year to debut two new movies. There is tomorrow’s closing night selection Jackie, an English-language biopic about Jackie Kennedy set in the immediate aftermath of the […]
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, […]
Tickled (2016; David Farrier and Dylan Reeve) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday at the Landmark Embarcadero in San Francisco and the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley. In a crowded marketplace for documentaries, it’s easy to overpraise bold formal and visual ambitions, and easy to overlook a more […]
Tab Hunter Confidential (2015; Jeffrey Schwarz) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes A 1950s heartthrob sold to the public as “six feet of rugged manhood” and chaste, Dobie Gillis-like heterosexuality, Tab Hunter remained “very closeted” away from the cameras. Now 84 years old and still the embodiment of sun-kissed […]
Welcome to Leith (2015; Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes Welcome to Leith looks at the panic that overtook the citizens of a tiny North Dakota farming community when white supremacists sought to take over their town. A barren city of a […]
