Volume four of Film Movement’s Festival Favorites series features three films with female leads. While these certainly aren’t the worst films I have seen, the pacing of each of these films make them hard to watch; So Bright is the View especially. Each film has a significant social critique that might be worth the watch if you have the patience to find it, but it definitely takes a special kind of filmgoer to really appreciate these types of films. In addition to each film featuring a female lead, they each hail from a different country, which seems to be important for each film’s message. A Blast from Greece, Soldate Jeanette from France, and So Bright is the View from Romania.

A Blast delivers a very foregrounded message about the most recent financial crisis in Greece. However, if you don’t really know too much about it, the film gets very confusing very quickly. The timelines in the narrative jump around without warning, from present to past, but there are so many different “pasts” that it is hard to pinpoint exactly where in the main character’s life we are. My assumption would be that these separate “pasts” are like memories in chronological order, but they are each introduced (or concluded? never quite clear) with a steamy, borderline pornographic sex scene between her and her husband. So if you are not ready to see two young lovers copulate as a sort of transitional piece, you are already going to feel uncomfortable. However, even if you are able to sit through the intense sexual endeavors, they distract you from their very purpose: an insight to Maria’s dreams for her and her husband. So while I can obviously tell that there are a lot of great allegories to be read about the financial crisis, it is very hard to keep up with the timelines through all of the sex.

I can’t be the only one who is a little relieved that Hollywood has finally decided to stop churning out found-footage films.  This is not me saying I have anything against the genre; when it is well done, the end result is something I will happily consume and enjoy re-watching.  The first Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project are the films that shine, because they gave us a familiar story but presented it to the audience in a way we haven’t seen before.  There have been several successful found-footage films, but only a few that I feel will stand the test of time (at least in film history amongst geeks), and Followers is surprisingly a film I’d rank high on that list.  This isn’t some endorsement because it was made basically in our hometown, but the film manages to utilize the familiar concept and flip it in a way that is not only unique but is relevant to today’s culture that is obsessed with social media.

The film’s opening scene is one of my only major complaints, where it gives too much away as we see a jogger Facetiming her friend and suddenly attacked.  In most horror films, getting that opening stinger to get the audience’s heart pumping is usually a good thing, but here I feel it takes away from the slow-burn effect the film has on the audience.  We now know to anticipate someone being in the woods, which I understand could be their intention to help create a sense of dread … but we are going into this knowing it’s a horror film; the dread is already in place.

Often times, biographical documentaries are release posthumously, essentially immortalizing the spirit of the subject. In the case of Shadowman, street artist Richard Hambleton remained alive to be featured in the documentary and see his work be shared at a number of festivals before his death in October of 2017. Now, thanks to Storyville Films, you can take a look at the life and work of Richard Hambleton, as he emerges from the shadows – so to speak. Quite figuratively working in the shadows of other giants such as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Richard Hambleton is quite the understated artist. This documentary explores his life and his art, and more importantly, how the two communicate with one another.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this documentary is the way in which we actually get to see footage of Hambleton working on his pieces, and just the pieces themselves. Every bit of his art is awe inspiring, so much so that it looks unbelievable. That is, until you see him do it right in front of you. One of the most breath-taking sequences shown in this documentary features Hambleton being filmed by someone at night, creating one of his famous “shadowmen” on the side of a wall in New York. The swiftness and accuracy of getting this piece to completion is astounding. Unfortunately, this was the only known clip of him creating one of these figures, so the documentary uses it more than once. While it is fun to watch, the way in which they use it the second time seems more like a lazy bit of “filler footage” rather than something that carried weight in the rhetoric of the film.