Finders Keepers (2015; Bryan Carberry and J. Clay Tweel) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes If there were an award for Best Documentary That You Least Expected to Be an Emotionally Involving, Lump-in-Your-Throat Examination of Grief, Ambition, Class Resentment, Imperious Fathers, Media Exploitation and Human Frailty, then this tabloid-ready […]
Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (2015; Alex Gibney) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes *Opens today at the Embarcadero Center Cinemas in San Francisco and the California Theatre in Berkeley. There are many alleyways in the life of Apple CEO Steve Jobs that prolific documentarian Alex Gibney […]
We Come as Friends (2015; Hubert Sauper) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes Nope, not the Zac Efron-goes-EDM drama. Instead, Darwin’s Nightmare director Hubert Sauper writes, directs and edits this rambling, sneakily compelling documentary about modern-day colonialism in Sudan. This adventurous Frenchman also pilots an ultralight plane of his […]
Listen to Me Marlon (2015; Stevan Riley) GRADE: A- By Daniel Barnes “Raw and Deeply Personal” Contrary to the didactic self-inflation and conclusion-based approach of Best of Enemies, Steven Riley’s stunning documentary Listen to Me Marlon practically bursts with a sense of discovery. It shows new sides to […]
Best of Enemies (2015; Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes I generally recoil when I hear the word “important” in a documentary. Besides being an utterly meaningless evaluation, it’s a red flag of self-inflation. If you need to bring on a stacked deck of […]
The Look of Silence (2015; Joshua Oppenheimer) GRADE: A- By Daniel Barnes In the Fall of 1965, the military-led, American-supported government of Indonesia oversaw the genocide of nearly one million people under the guise of eradicating Communism, and the people who ordered and carried out the butchery became […]
