By Daniel Barnes After many years of writing about movies for online and print publications, 2019 challenged me to remain a film critic. The Sacramento News & Review dropped movie reviews from the paper in early January. Even if the SN&R kept me around, the freelance limits of […]
Chulas Fronteras (1976; Les Blank) GRADE: B+ Del Mero Corazón (1979; Maureen Gosling) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes Les Blank made a lot of music documentaries, but he was also one of the cinema’s great ethnographers. His delightful 1976 film Chulas Fronteras (Beautiful Borders) ostensibly covers culture-blending Tejano musicians along the […]
Paris is Burning (1990; Jennie Livingston) Grade: B+ By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, July 5, at the Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco and the Landmark Shattuck in Berkeley. Released in 1990 but immersed in the ethos of 1980s New York, Paris is Burning still feels like one of the […]
Transit (2019; Christian Petzold) GRADE: B- By Daniel Barnes *Opens Friday, May 3, at the Tower Theatre in Sacramento. “Thoughtful Yet Glacial” German director Christian Petzold follows up his 2015 critical darling Phoenix with another thoughtful yet glacial melodrama that flits around the margins of World War II. Transit is […]
Leeeeeeeet’s get reeeeeeeady to watch a sad, lazy, coprophiliac sports comedy starring a couple of bottom-feeding Hollywood legacy actors! Subdued wrestler Corky McDonnell and capital Ganz tax advocate Daniel Barnes strap on some Spandex to prepare for their review of Brian Robbins’ terribly unfunny Ready to Rumble, starring David Arquette […]
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Heartbeeps (1981; Allan Arkush) – Dare Daniel Podcast Episode 16 “These friendly robots are obviously not mischievous trespassers.” Banana daiquiri expert Daniel Barnes and lumber (and its profitable by-products) specialist Corky McDonnell rip open a couple of bags of beers to discuss Allan Arkush’s indelibly disturbing 1981 family […]
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