Flight of a Bullet (2017) Film Comment Selects 2019

Single take documentary will either thrill you or bore you into unconsciousness. I had a hard time remaining awake.

Beginning with a statement that says that as long as you film you will stay alive the film then jumps to a road in Eastern Ukraine where filmmaker is shooting a bridge that separatists had failed to blow up. Crossing the bridge she and the people there are confronted by soldiers. A stray remark has one of her friends in trouble and when they haul him off she jumps into the car and goes off filming the whole time.

What you think is going to be a tense confrontation is revealed to be much ado about nothing. Its quickly realized that he was no one and was in fact on their side- he begins to tell the soldiers things…and yet Beata Bubenec keeps filming as nothing much happens and the scariest thing is the director gets hit on.

The pieces on the film talk about the banality of warfare but I can’t be that generous, this is just banal. There is nothing profound about it on any level. It’s kind of like watching a home movie where something almost happens a half an hour in and then the person keeps the camera running for another hour for no real reason. And while I’m certain that the filming kept Bubenecsafe (the guy who hits on her is creepy), there isn’t any real reason to watch the footage.

The best way to describe this is as the record of a thing that almost happened but didn’t and some other stuff.

This is the sort of observational documentary that gives observational documentaries a bad name. Frankly if this wasn’t a single take no one would care.

In Brief: Los Reyes (2018) Film Comment Selects 2019

Observational documentary about a skate park in Chile where two dogs wander about and skaters skate.

Focusing more on the dogs than the skaters, we see the skaters as they skate and hang out around the dogs, this is a quiet look at the life of man’s best friend. If you love dogs then you might want to consider seeing this because the two dogs will worm their way into your heart—and then break it since it becomes clear that one of them isn’t long for the world. (bring tissues)

I liked the film, but to be honest if I hadn’t said I’d cover the film I would have walked away. There simply isn’t enough here to really support the films 70 minutes. While the film did break my heart I was kind of left wondering what I got out of it beyond that.

The Hidden City (2018) Film Comment 2019

THE HIDDEN CITY is an incredible visual experience of the highest order. A glorious dance of light and dark this portrait of the tunnels that exist under Madrid will knock you off your feet and make you gasp. It’s not so much what it shows us (people working and living under ground) but how it shows us. For example we are not just watching sparks flying in a work site but instead some sort of orange fireworks exploding in unexpected directions. Men in environmental suits checking tunnel walls become tiny specks drifting in inky blackness.

We frequently ask ourselves Are we on earth or in space? It sounds like a profoundly stupid question but director Victor Moreno has created a work that transcends time and place. Where are we? When are we? We aren’t sure. Images seem to have been pulled out of some great lost science fiction epic – except that this is all real.

When I was sent a screening link for TH HIDDEN CITY and it came with strict instructions, I was to watch the film in total darkness with either really good headphones or a high quality speaker system. When I sat down to watch the film the first thing I saw was on screen instructions that said exactly the same thing. I thought it might be a little bit over kill—and then the film started and I realized that this really should be seen in a darkened theater on a huge screen where we can’t look away and can’t get distracted.

I really can’t critique this film other than say it is an awesome experience. If you can see it on a big screen you should.

For tickets and more information go here