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 […]
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 […]
A Poem is a Naked Person (1974/2015; Les Blank) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes Documentarian Les Blank (Burden of Dreams) started shooting A Poem is a Naked Person in 1972 and completed it in 1974. However, the film was held up for decades by legal issues, and it’s […]
Rebels of the Neon God (1992: Tsai Ming-liang) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes Festival circuit cinephiles revere Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang for films like Goodbye Dragon Inn, What Time is It There?, last year’s Stray Dogs, and Journey to the West (the slow-walking monk one, not the kung […]
When Marnie Was There (2015; Hiromasa Yonebayashi) GRADE: B+ By Daniel Barnes Hand-drawn animation stalwarts Studio Ghibli shut down production late August following the retirement of guiding light Hiyao Miyazaki. Therefore, When Marnie Was There may be the last feature film we see under the Ghibli label in […]
