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: Movie Reviews
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.
In the Heat of the Night (1967): Criterion Collection [Blu-Ray]
Norman Jewison’s “In the Heat of the Night” remains one of Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger’s banner dramas, it’s a tense, taut, and engrossing crime thriller that brings to life one of the most compelling on screen heroes I’ve ever seen. Based on John Ball’s series of books about African American gumshoe named Virgil Tibbs, Jewison brings to the screen the first of the books. “Heat,” as written by Stirling Silliphant for the big screen is an imperfect drama with a little bit too much fat to the narrative, but in the end it comes out as a pretty as remarkable drama about the racially turbulent South and a man trying to uncover a crime that reaches far deeper than anyone, even the police chief, realizes.
Double Dragon (1994): 2 Disc Special Edition [Blu-Ray/DVD]
Director James Yukich’s “Double Dragon” is a nineties anomaly that’s right up there with “Super Mario Bros: The Movie,” and “Street Fighter: The Movie.” It’s so deliriously awful and willingly misses the point of the source material it adapts, and yet it’s delightfully entertaining. As an artifact of the decade, it’s a fun tribute to everything 1990’s (Mark Dacascos and Scott Wolf!), as a video game movie it’s a fascinating example of what not to do, and as an action movie it’s a serviceable amalgam of martial arts, comedy, science fiction, post apocalyptic fantasy, and chop socky schlock. If you can divorce yourself from the video game, “Double Dragon” works as a fascinating but entertaining botched cash in on a video game series that was so much better.
Monday (2018)
Part of Robert Rodriguez’s “Rebel Without a Crew” TV docu series, Alejandro Montoya Marin was one of the five filmmakers chosen to make his first feature much in the way Rodriguez did with “El Mariachi.” With only seven thousand dollars, no crew, two weeks to film, “Monday” is a heavy task to complete and Alejandro Montoya Marin is up for the challenge. It’s hard to believe “Monday” has such a low budget, as it manages to build such a fun darkly comic crime thriller out of such limited resources.
Glass (2019)
Night Shyamalan shocked just about everyone when at the end of “Split” his wonderful thriller about a psycho with multiple personalities, he introduced the reveal that we were watching a secret sequel to “Unbreakable” the whole time. “Glass” is the third film in the trilogy of films that break down superhero tropes, the superhero genre, and the mythology of superheroes as a whole. Even with Shyamalan shocking people with “Split” and still being one of the first of his ilk to break apart the superhero mythology with “Unbreakable,” his last film in the series, “Glass,” promises to polarize just about everyone.