Director Heidi Yewman does a lot to conjure up awareness of gun violence and has contributed to injecting the reality of gun violence in the public consciousness. With ”Behind the Bullet” she continues that tradition for better and for worse. While “Behind the Bullet” is a documentary that everyone should watch, it’s a documentary people will only be able to see once, as it’s often difficult to endure. It shows us the stark reality of gun violence in four forms, but it’s also so incredibly depressing and soul crushing, and at rare times feels like its intent on shocking us more than informing us.
Category Archives: Slamdance Film Festival
The Vast of Night (2019) [Slamdance Film Festival 2019]
It’s not often these days I can sit down to watch a film that just transports me in to another place or time. Sometimes the artifice is too apparent, but I tell you “The Vast of Night” transported in me in to another place and time from the moment the movie opened. Andrew Patterson has on his hands a movie that promises to become a genre classic, and I’m glad I was able to watch it during its time at Slamdance. It’s a masterpiece of genre film making and one I was bowled over with until the very end. I am not at all kidding when I say once the film closed, I sat in my seat still and stunned.
Slamdance Narrative Shorts Block 1 [Slamdance Film Festival 2019]
Autumn Waltz (2018)
Ognjen Petkovic’s short thriller is a tense look at a couple trying to escape a war zone and make it out of enemy lines without becoming one of the many victims of the ensuing battles. Set in the 1990’s amidst a landscape of rubble, and torn down deluxe flats, a man and woman attempt to make it outside of Yugoslavia. When they’re faced with a barricade of ruthless armed soldiers, they make up a story that allows them free passage. But as the soldiers interrogate them their reasons for leaving their home land begin to fall apart. At the last minute they’re saved by the most unlikely source and it’s a testament to how the past can affect the present, and vice versa. It’s a well shot and tense short with some fine photography and I quite liked it.
Withdrawn (2017) [Slamdance Film Festival 2017]
Adrian Murray’s “Withdrawn” is like Gus Van Sant attempted mumblecore but decided to make it even more droning and monotonous. It’s kind of like performance art through and through, all testing our patience for the insanely mundane and minute, while character Aaron goes through his every day life literally doing nothing. About halfway he has some financial scheme planned to keep his rented room but that’s not the important element. It’s all about how tedious the film can get and if we’re willing to wait for our pay off, if it ever comes at all. Aaron fixes a fern. He looks up tutorials on trying to solve a rubiks cube, and even has a five minute telephone discussion where we only hear him talking to and responding to the individual. Yes, I get it.
Hotel Coolgardie (2017) [Slamdance Film Festival 2017]
I’m pretty surprised at how entertaining and compelling Pete Gleeson’s documentary “Hotel Coolgardie” ends up being. It has such a weird and odd premise that threatens to be so dull and monotonous. But by the end of the movie I was more than thrown in to this surreal situation and cared about the two focal points of the movie Lina and Steph. It doesn’t have a huge social message or political aspirations but is a pleasantly engrossing tale about two foreigners in a new land, both of whom struggle to adapt amidst a large lifestyle of sexism, xenophobia and alienation. You’d think a premise for a documentary of this ilk would be reserved for art house movie fodder, but the fact it has happened for years is so fascinating and makes you wonder who else has walked in to Hotel Coolgardie.
Suck it Up (2017) [Slamdance Film Festival 2017]
I’ve always been a fan of movies that examine how deaths can affect the ones we love and how it can create a pretty significant ripple. “Suck It Up” is a bit of “Garden State,” and “Ordinary People” mixed with mumblecore here and there. While I appreciate director Jordan Canning’s efforts to create this drama about how the death of one of the more important people in their lives affected them drastically, the script from Julia Hoff seems to be almost bereft of drama to the point where scenes just stretch out in to nothingness. There are a lot of really drawn out moments where almost nothing happens. In brief scenes where Canning tackles the dynamic between our characters Ronnie and Faye, “Suck It Up” presents only slight glimmers of an emotional character study.