Hidden Gems & Bragging Rights

Hidden Gems & Bragging Rights

by Karenna Umscheid

photograph: life

I am, admittedly, a pretty pretentious moviegoer. I love to see lesser-known films for a number of reasons, some of them very noble! It’s so important to support newer, more underground filmmakers, to use one’s power as a viewer and a consumer to uplift new and lesser-known voices. But also, I am only slightly embarrassed to admit I love the egotistical rush of seeing a film before everyone else; of seeing something totally new and underground and bound to be a hit, liking it before everyone else does. 

The joy in discovering a new classic, a hidden gem that when it gets a wide release, will become the movie everybody’s been talking about, is a delicious, nearly indescribable high. It’s getting to feel really smart, cool, and only slightly pretentious. It’s getting to write a mysterious Letterboxd review and rave to everyone constantly about the movie they have to wait to see. It’s getting to see the trailer for the movie before it’s released and watch the buzz grow and grow. And yeah, it’s good to support new filmmakers! 

At the Boston Underground Film Festival (BUFF) last year, I reviewed How to Save a Pipeline, an excellent environmental crime thriller I actually wrote about for this blog as well! The energy in the room was simply electric, like an exceptional repertory screening but with a distinct air of importance. For a public, ticketed screening, it felt so private, so exclusive, so secretive and important. 

This year, every screening at BUFF looks enticing and creative in ways that widely released blockbusters don’t always deliver. This period of time, the beginning of the year, is always the slowest in movie theaters, with few new releases to pull large crowds. Despite the exceptional, well-deserved hype of Dune 2, this time between now and summer may not be filled with packed theaters and exceptional uses of the IMAX space. The timing for BUFF could not be more perfect!

I’m only seeing one BUFF screening (stay tuned for the With Love and a Major Organ review!), but if I could, I would see nearly every one of them! The festival opens with a screening of the highly anticipated Immaculate, led by Sydney Sweeney, and the rest of the lineup is just as promising. It features an array of science fiction, thriller, and horror/slasher films bleeding with originality and rawness, demonstrating the bright, bright future of film. I’m extremely intrigued by the supposed blend of slow cinema and grisly slasher in In a Violent Nature, the surely bloody Tiger Stripes, and the psychological thrills and mysteries of Sleep, to name a few.

Straying from my typical one-special-movie-screening-per-week formula this blog is known to follow, instead, I say - please go see a BUFF screening! Whether you want to go in cold or read a ton of early summaries on Letterboxd, you’ll see something new, unlike most of the mainstream blockbusters currently playing, and you’ll get to feel really cool about your movie taste, too.

Until next Wednesday,

Karenna