By Daniel Barnes More coffee-fueled palaver about meaningless awards and reductive categorizations? No problemo! WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25 Love & Mercy ***REWATCH*** (Dir.: Bill Pohlad; GRADE: B+) The only real change from my initial assessment of this Brian Wilson biopic is that I severely underrated Paul Giamatti’s performance, probably […]
w By Daniel Barnes I’m dedicating the month leading up to the SF Film Critics Circle awards on 12/13 to my End-of-Year Cramfest. It’s my personal War on Xmas – I’ll be screening the awards contenders, catching up on overlooked movies, and rewatching some of my favorites from […]
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 […]
Little Richard (2000; Robert Townsend) GRADE: D By Daniel Barnes *NOTE: This review was originally published on The Barnesyard in 2006. “Gentile, Quasi-Inspiring Treatment” Hollywood biopics are less filmed biographies than they are hagiographies. There is an assumption that every story should be “inspiring”, even if the subject […]
Capricious Summer (1968; Jiri Menzel) GRADE: B By Daniel Barnes For some reason, I watched Capricious Summer thinking it was the predecessor to writer-director-actor Jiri Menzel’s more polished Closely Watched Trains. Instead, this bawdy and cluttered but raggedly beautiful comedy was Menzel’s follow-up to Closely Watched Trains, which […]
By Daniel Barnes *Originally published on the Movie City USA blog on August 21, 2007 [w/updated comments at the end] “He makes Hollywood feel better about itself.” -David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film I think that Thomson means this not just in the sense that Ron […]
