Fox and His Friends

1975 movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The titular circus performer loses his job when his boss/lover is arrested. He scrounges up some money to play the lottery, wins, and is then manipulated by his titular friends.

Another happy German movie. Well, if your idea of happy is closer to devastatingly bleak. Parents renting this to show their children because they think it might be a sequel to The Fox and the Hound will certainly be unhappy. It also has nothing to do with this children's book:

Unless, of course, that children's book has a lot more penis than you'd think by looking at the camera. It's possible, I guess. That pig looks a little randy. But yes, there's an awful lot of penis in this movie. One wonders if Rainer Werner Fassbinder directed this and starred as the titular loser as an excuse to show his penis to a bunch of people. I didn't realize that as Fassbinder as Fox until I looked it up. He's fine as an actor, but I thought he was a portly gentleman. El Hedi ben Salem, one of Fassbinder's boyfriends and the star of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, makes a brief appearance in this one to as a "Moroccan." Speaking of homosexuality, here's a question. Should I have been shocked at a kiss in the first five minutes of this movie between Fox and the circus guy? And if I was shocked, what does that say about me? Keep in mind that it was kind of an odd moment for a kiss anyway. But it's 2013, and I'm not sure if I should be shocked with an onscreen kiss between two men, especially with the amount of gay porn I watch. Fox says "When I have fun, I want to have regrets." He's a tragic character who has a little fun in this movie and, I'm guessing, a whole lot of regrets. Fassbinder tells his story with a fair share of dramatic irony. I don't think there are a lot of people who could watch this not knowing that Fox is being used by people and that his lottery winnings are going to end up being his downfall. It's a lot like those stories you hear about people striking it rich and ending up with ruined lives. This is a movie about how people, regardless of their sexual proclivities, will use other people and about how money corrupts. It might not be interesting all the time and seemed a little long to me, but there is a lot of penis.

Even Dwarfs Started Small

1970 movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Inmates at some sort of institution run amok.

This was actually the first I knew of Werner Herzog because I was on a crazy quest to get my hands on bizarre movies as well as movies that had little people. I was instantly a fan. What choice did I have? It's a cast of little people! I'm not actually sure what the point of that is. Honestly, I'm not completely sure what the point of the entire movie is. I don't think Herzog's focus is broad, and I don't think he's filming anything satirical. Instead, I think this has more to do with individual psyche, a kind of duel between the part of a person that wants to go by the book and follow the rules and be normal and the part of the person that wants to raise hell and burst seams and piss fire. Herzog films this almost like it's a documentary. There are several times when the performers--all, I believe, non-professionals--will look at the camera and presumably at Herzog, sometimes like they believe they might be in danger. It gives this an odd kind of realism. At times, they do look like they're in danger, especially Gerhard Maerz who plays a character named Territory. I believe that's the little guy who was run over by a car at one point during the filming and caught fire in another scene. He's the real stuntman of the group--climbing out of a moving vehicle to the top, etc. Herzog put these little actors and actresses through some stressful situations, so stressful that he promised he would jump into a bunch of cacti following the filming. None of these actors went on to have film careers. In fact, almost all of them have only this movie in their filmography. Pepi Hermine played "The President" in this and also played the president in Downey's Putney Swope. Helmut Doring was also in Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, and he's awesome in this, spending almost the entire movie laughing demonically. It's the kind of laugh that you'll hear long after the movie has ended, maybe in your dreams and maybe in somebody else's dreams. You really can't take your eyes off this guy. Doring is the tiniest of the bunch, and there's one scene where he spends about five minutes trying to get onto a bed. Of course, that's not the most interesting thing these characters do. They have a forced marriage ceremony, peruse dirty magazines, interrupt a blind duo's game, disrupt piglets' dinner, conduct an insect wedding, make a car drive in endless circles, destroy typewriters and rugs, start cockfights, have pointing contests with trees, and crucify a monkey. Other than that crucified monkey, there are other shocking and bleak moments involving animals. There's a one-legged chicken that Herzog's camera watches for a long time, a scene where some chickens play with a dead mouse, and a really disturbing scene with piglets suckling a dead mother. And the movie starts with a slow circular pan of the premises and then a shot of a chicken pecking at a dead friend. Herzog's always got great endings, and this one doesn't disappoint. In fact, it's one of my favorite movie endings ever--Helmut Doring laughing while watching a defecating camel. It's a shot which goes on way too long which, in my opinion, is just the right amount of time.

M

1931 silent film with words

Rating: 20/20

Plot: A guy with giant eyes won't stop buying balloon animals and other treats for children, and for some reason, adults in the small German town have a problem with it. Maybe it's all the whistling.

I decided not to dock Fritz Lang points for M being situated in that weird transition time between the silent era and the talkies, primarily because I think this is the very best talking picture released in the five years following The Jazz Singer. Of course, like every other thought that I share on this blog, I'm typing that without really thinking about it and just picking an arbitrary amount of time period of five years. I don't like movies from the 1930s, but this one feels so modern. I think it's mostly the use of the montage and some unusual camera angles and this experimental playfulness. There's a montage of emptiness early on, one of those times when normally perfectly beneficent images describe so much more than words could. You get an abandoned ball, an empty chair, a drifting balloon. It's gripping stuff, somehow more disturbing than a scene where you actually see Hans strangle (or whatever) the child would have been. Later, there's an extended shot where the camera maneuvers over a bunch of lowlifes in a room, through a sheet of glass, and into a room with a couple little people and a guy with a peg leg. Lang throws out one of the finest examples of how to tell a story without a lot of words, and this could have easily been just as successful as a completely silent picture. I also like the almost complete lack of music which I think adds to the overall tone. Well, there's the leitmotif (the theme from "Inspector Gadget") which makes whistling sound a little more foreboding than it ever should. At the same time, there's this conflicting playfulness to the way Lang approaches the subject matter of little kids being murdered. There' s a scene where a table of gentlemen are arguing in a restaurant with one guy smoking this absurd pipe and another guy whose glasses keep falling off. Or another scene with titled camera angles during a disagreement between a really big guy and a really little guy. It's almost comical. And the first time we actually see Lorre? He's making faces at himself in the mirror, almost like Soderbergh in Schizopolis. And by the way, how many shots in the first half of this movie feature either two Lorres--like, the real one seen simultaneously with a reflection--or a Lorre seen through glass? It seems like a bunch of them which I'm sure means something. Peter Lorre's so good here although his eyes, nearly iconic, kind of overdo it. It's a tough character because on the one hand, he's murdering children and on the other hand seems kind of dopey, the former making you really want to respect the guy while the latter makes you not care what happens to him. (I'm joking, of course. Dopiness should always be applauded.) But his despicability is mixed with enough vulnerability to make him a pretty daring character for a 1931 movie. It's a great performance, especially for this transition period. These days, Hollywood would take this character to absurd levels and probably give him CGI eyeballs that have a diameter of ten inches or so. (That's another randomly-picked number, by the way.) One of my favorite smaller details from this--during the opening scene where some children are playing a game in the street, there's this kid in the back who can't stand still. He's got to be Fritz Lang's nephew or something because he would otherwise have been kicked out of the movie for being obnoxious. Or maybe he was left in the movie so that audiences would develop sympathy for Hans? I guess that's something to think about.

Cobra Verde

1987 crazy man movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Notorious outlaw Francisco Manoel de Silva takes a job overseeing slaves on a sugar plantation. After he knocks up the plantation owner's three daughters, he's sent to Africa to get the slave trade rolling again. The plantation owner and de Silva both know the job will likely end in death, but de Silva decides to go anyway.

"Herzog does not know that I give life to the dead scenery." --Klaus Kinski

You can see the production problems soak through the lush scenery and chaotic and intense scenes that take place in that scenery. The narrative's unbalanced, almost like the story had to pieced together from hours of messy footage. I had trouble following what was going on some of the time. And Kinski's character is wildly uneven. Sure, the titular chap was a crazy bandit, but I'm not even sure Kinski's performance makes much sense in that context. Still, Kinski's his usual electric self, and watching him on the screen is always an experience. In Cobra Verde, the goings-on around hiim are anarchic. Herzog fills the screen with extras and constant movement in a lot of the scenes. Yet Kinski always manages to stand out, like a deranged Where's Waldo? where Waldo jumps up and down and wildly waves his arms and then tries to stab you in the eye with a comically-large pencil. That performance, along with Herzog's eye for filming in exotic and often dangerous locales as well as the inhabitants of those locales, make this an intriguing movie experience despite its imperfections. And Herzog's run of brilliant movie endings continues with a jaw-dropping scene in this involving a boat and a deformed man. Add the Krautrock Popol Vuh soundtrack and you've got yourself another Werner Herzog narrative that is definitely worth watching.

"Arrgh! You don't understand my genius, Werner!"

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

1974 romantic comedy

Rating: 17/20

Plot: In Munich, Emmi flees a rainstorm and finds herself in a bar frequented by Arabic workers. She orders a Coke. Ali is double-dog-dared to ask her for a dance and ends up going home with her. She has a crib that is uncrowded compared to Ali's regular abode. He has a bitchin' beard. They fall in love and eventually get married. Because of their different races and ages (she's far older than Ali), Emmi's children and neighbors and co-workers frown upon the relationship.

This movie was shot very quickly, something like fifteen days, and it seems like a pretty quick production. At the same time, a lot of the shots are set up so well that the whole thing looks meticulously planned. Fassbinder utilizes the architecture to help show the relationships and feelings of these characters. Vertical lines or sometimes frames separate one character from another. Railings, windows, glass, doorways, and other lines of furniture or structures frequently divide, alienating. And a lot of times, it's just space. You get a lot of scenes where Ali and Emmi are on one side of the room, and when the camera reveals the other occupants of said room, they're all huddled together watching the couple, usually with scowls, and very far away. I like how Fassbinders' camera shows that alienation and loneliness. And I like how there aren't any unnecessary words to show the emotions of the peripheral characters. Why have characters yell out their feelings when you can have them kick in a television or stare at the camera with those aforementioned scowls? El Hedi ben Salem, Fassbinders' boyfriend apparently, is an interesting presence. On the one hand, he just looks so strong and intimidating. It might have something to do with the beard. But in his context, he has this fragility that makes him, at least for the first half of the movie, a contradiction. He communicates in what, judging by the subtitles, seems like a broken-German. I don't speak German, so I don't know how realistic it actually sounds. Brigitte Mira (she's in The Enigma of Kasper Hauser) is terrific as Emmi--strong-minded but brittle, confident but naive. It's a wonderful performance. I really liked a scene where she checks herself out in a mirror. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is almost deceptive in the way it tells such a simple story in such an honest way. If this is a "small" Fassbinder film that was made in fifteen days, I really need to see the "bigger" ones.

The White Ribbon

2009 Face-Palm D'or Winner

Rating: 16(?)/20

Plot: In a German village just prior to The Great War (Wait a second. I don't know history. Is the first World War or the second one called The Great War? Or are either of them called that? Seems like I should know that, but when I was a kid, my teachers started with explorers every single year and never got very far. So I still know why Balboa named the ocean he found the Pacific Ocean [And speaking of that, why should we credit somebody with finding an ocean? Do you think the other explorers used to laugh at Balboa and talk about him behind his back? "Hey, Cow Head (That's what one explorers name meant. Cabeza de Vaca--head of the cow. I learned that thirteen times between my kindergarten and twelfth grade years actually. If that information was actually useful, I might have a life today that I could be proud of. Instead, I'm just a surly middle-aged man who knows useless things. Thanks a lot, former teachers.), when are you going to find another ocean? He he ha."] [Editor's Note: Shane became too depressed to complete this plot synopsis.]

This might be the coldest movie I've ever seen. I guess most people who know Michael Haneke's movies (the hilarious Funny Games and the action-packed Cache) aren't going to use "warmth" when describing them, but this one seemed even more detached, probably because of the crisp but eerie black and white. This was certainly a gorgeous movie, shots that looked like they could be photographs in an art museum, right next to Ansel Adams' stuff maybe. And for (especially) American audiences, that's going to be one of the serious issues with The White Ribbon. At times, the plot moves about as quickly as a photograph. Scenes that didn't really really seem to add to the character development or advance the plot just lingered. Characters seemed frozen in time, moving stiffly, probably with syrup in the britches. This movie is just so quiet, too quiet. And the bad deeds that the characters commit add up to this mood of despair. There's no on-screen violence, but the community and its population is drenched in this very thick molasses of violence, something you just get the feeling they won't be able to swim their way out of. Children are abused, birds are harmed, and it's all too much to take. Like Haneke's other movies, I'm not really intelligent enough to write about this one. I'm probably not even smart enough to watch it. (Editor's note: Shane became too depressed to finish this review.)

Here's a picture of a squirrel:

Horrors of Spider Island

1960 go-go-ploitation movie

Rating: 2/20

Plot: Sleazeball Gary, nightclub manager, hires himself a posse of leggy dancers and hops in a plane to Singapore. Unfortunately, the plane crashes and the group winds up stranded on an island. They find some food, enjoy their time skinny dipping, and struggle to survive. Gary, after wandering into the woods one night, is bitten by a dopey-looking spider and turns into a horrible monster. Will the dancers be rescued before Gary kills them all? Can they survive the horrors of spider island? And is this the worst movie I'll see all year?

I spent the majority of this movie trying to figure out why it was dubbed, very poorly dubbed. The actors and strippers certainly looked like English speakers. Turns out that this was filmed in Germany as Ein Toter hing im Netz, or A Corpse Hangs in the Web. It's also known as It's Hot in Paradise. References to both webs and spider (and horror for that matter) are misleading since there's a single shot with a corpse hanging in a web and not all that much action involving the dude who turns into a murderous spider/man hybrid. But anyway, this certainly shows how low Germany had sunk following WWII. What makes me most angry is that this movie was just a big tease. You saw a lot of leg and a great deal of skin, but nary a nipple. And you saw a spider puppet a couple times and a spider-guy a few more times, but the latter's hairy hand sort of grabbing at victims was about it for the titular horrors. I did dig that dubbing though. You get to hear people pronounce "rations" with a long a-sound, lots of exaggerated sound effects like slurping and moans, and inflection that doesn't come close to matching the moods of the character. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the characters had better things to say. "Is there anything more wonderful than water?" "A dead man. . .in a huge web." It's not good writing, but at least by the end of the picture, they had figured out what the plot would be. Throw in what has to be one of the worst fight scenes in cinematic history (it ends with a hug) and some special-ed effects (that plane crash was really something) and a jazzy score and you've got yourself a pretty bitchin' movie. Oh, there's a catfight in this one, too, if you're into that sort of thing.

The Blue Angel

1930 uplifting German melodrama

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Professor Garbage, respectable while not necessarily respected, confiscates some suggestive postcards depicting leggy Lola currently performing at a burlesque show at a dive called The Blue Angel. With his students distracted and corrupted,the good professor decides to do something about it. So he makes a trip to The Blue Angel to lust after the lovely Lola himself. Quick ruination ensues.

Boy, that Marlene Dietrich had legs, and she knew how to use them. Her legs' performance is very very good, especially good for 1930, and Emil Jannings gives a quiet, realistic (especially for 1930) performance as the tragic protagonist. Jannings is a very good actor, and there seemed to be no problems transitioning from silent to sound movies. Really, though, it's the scenes where he remains silent where he is the best. Right from the beginning, in his apartment and in his classroom, you get the feel that he's living an incomplete life. The tone is somber throughout although it's not all gloom. There are some humorous touches (the way the professor blows his nose, his teaching of the correct pronunciation of the word "the") that I like. Symbolic imagery (dead birds, clowns and clown collars--admittedly obvious in that early form sort of way) doesn't get in the way. I really liked a scene in Lola's room when the professor studies two side-by-side reflections of himself (hinting that there's another professor about to emerge) and another with a singing bird and cage-life shadows on the wall that echoes the very first scene of the movie. The scenes in The Blue Angel, filled with magic and bawdiness and clowns, are well done, the screen cluttered with all kinds of posters and props and other things to see. There's also some expressionistic scenery, mostly in the street scenes, that give a visual for the emotional claustrophobia the professor is about to experience. There are some slower moments and some parts of the plot that might have benefited from being stretched. As an almost-fable starring Emil Jannings, this does have a lot in common with The Last Laugh. I think I might prefer The Last Laugh despite that weird ending it had.

Give it another go, winter rates.

First Spaceship on Venus

1960 science fiction movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Some space taffy is found at an excavation site, and following examination, it's decided that the space taffy actually contains a message from the planet Venus. A rocket ship with an international crew is sent to figure out what the Venusians want. On the way, the crew discovers that the message is actually all about plans to invade our planet.

I really sort of liked this movie. Sure, it's choppy and has terrible acting. Sure, it is overly verbose, and, to make that verbosity worse, has really poorly written dialogue. But there's an artistic quality to this cheap science fiction movie that makes it all worth it. There's great imaginative set design with some odd special effects that give this some charm. Popcorn meteor showers, great moogy sound effects, superimposed drifting fog, syrupy lava flows, hopping spidery Venus inhabitants. Venus has a really nice texture, gnarled and weather-beaten and kinda Seussian, and the designs for the space vehicles are pretty good. There are some space craft details that push this ahead of the typical flat B-movie science fiction ships. There's also a funky little chess-playing robot that rolls around like a tank and occasionally mumbles something about the weather. I even liked the bizarre wardrobe choices--uniforms with seemingly random letters on them, odd spacesuits that looked almost like chipmunk costumes, rubbery planet-exploration suits. And even though it's a little too talky, there are some nice themes about persevering through tragedy and fear and possibly even about the importance of Earthlings uniting in order to overcome the problems we face. Good 50's sci-fi drama!

The Last Laugh

1924 silent German drama

Rating: 17/20

Plot: An aging man immensely proud of his job as a ritzy hotel doorman, along with the accompanying big-buttoned uniform that he gets to wear, shows up to work one day to find out that he has been demoted because of a misunderstanding on the previous night. Because of his many years of service, the hotel gives him a job in the washroom. Stripped of his uniform, he can't face being also stripped of his dignity and steals the uniform back to hide the loss of his job and status from his wife and his neighbors.

This is a much, much better film if stopped before the epilogue. I happened to love the downer that was the real ending even though there is a really nice one-shot sequence where the camera moves from patron to patron to waiter to patron to waiter in a crowded fancy restaurant that is really cool. Really, everything up to that point in this Murnau film is about perfect. The acting, especially from the lead, is spectacular for 1920's drama, so good that not a single title card is even needed to tell the story. Of course, it's not just the acting that tells the admittedly simple story here. The camera actually does most of the work, and it's amazing to see a 1924 film in which the camera does this much work. The fluidity (especially), the creative angles, the effects, the zoomings in and out. Impressive and undoubtedly influential stuff. Seriously, find me a camera that moves this much in the first half of the 20's. The set is also worth mentioning, a beautifully realistic construction of a city with towering and leaning buildings. Also impressive is the use of lighting and shadow in the movie. Along with the setting changes--the literal placement of our protagonist--the lighting mirrors the temperament of the unfortunate ex-doorman. My favorite scene--when the wife discovers her husband's secret and runs away screeching. It probably wasn't meant to be funny, but I couldn't help myself and may have chuckled.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

1926 (possibly first) full-length animated film

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Based on The Arabian Nights stories. An evil African magician conjures up a flying horse, part of his plan to marry the princess. Prince Achmed is tricked into taking off on the flying horse, and it takes him to China which, apparently, is a land full of demons. There, he falls in love and has numerous adventures including battling the demons in order to save his love interest.

This is stunning and needs to be seen by more people. It goes far beyond the historical value of being (maybe) the first animated feature-length movie. The look is a unique one, the animation of silhouettes on psychedelic backgrounds. It sort of reminds me of shadow puppets, but the details are exquisite and the figures are artistic and creative. It's easy to appreciate the amount of time and care that went into this. By far the best animated movie I've seen with the character Aladdin.

Hell on Wheels

2004 Tour de France documentary

Rating: 13/20

Plot: This documentary is an intimate look at a German racing team during the 2003 Tour de France. Focused mostly on Erik Zabel and Rolf Aldrag, teammates and roommates who bicker over who gets to hold the remote control, the film takes a look at the trials and tribulations of cyclists during the three weeks this race goes on. Peppered throughout is historical black and white footage of earlier tours.

This was recommended by my brother, a cyclist. I wonder how much enjoyment I'm missing because I don't know diddly-squat about the sport or have any interest in any of these people. It's beautifully filmed with lots of great landscape shots of France, and a movie can never have too many scenes with old man massaging the legs of cyclists. It all looks very dangerous (lots of road burns, bruises, nicks) and is frequently exciting, but the documentary itself could have used some editing and less music. Gruelling work for the cyclists, I'm sure, but watching the thing also made me pretty tired. I was amazed at some of the badassery--one guy rode with a broken collarbone and another with a broken coccyx. One guy, I know, only rode with one testicle, but they didn't talk about that. It should be noted that both cyclists at the center of this documentary later confessed to doping in the nineties.

Waxworks

1924 silent film

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A writer is hired by the owner of a wax museum to pen stories inspired his wax figures. The writer immediately gets to work, imagining himself and the owner's daughter (with whom he is quite smitten) in the fantasies he creates for a sultan, Ivan the Terrible, and a Jack the Ripper rip-off.

This is worth seeing if only for the cool expressionist sets that seem right out of Doc Caligari's cabinet. Angular and striking, a lot of the backgrounds look like they could belong in museums on their own. Color is also used well in this black and white movie, and there's some interesting multiple exposure experimentation going on in the dreamy Jack the Snipper sequence. The stories-within-the-stories themselves aren't anything to get overly excited about. Honestly, I wasn't even sure what was going on in the one with Ivan the Terrible. But this is an interesting little film that makes me want to see more of Paul Leni's work.

Me, sporting my new handlebar beard:

Perfume: Story of a Murderer

2006 stinkfest

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with exceptional olfactory powers under a table in a fish market in Paris. When his mother is hanged, he's sent to an orphanage and eventually winds up being sold and working for a tanner and then a perfume maker with a really large nose (played by Dustin Hoffmann's nose). His gift enables him to make the world's greatest perfume, but he wants to continue to experiment, extracting the scents of deceased cats and abandoned iron. He sets off for Grasse to discover the perfect, and more than slightly grisly, ingredients to concoct a smell that could impress the French and put his name on the map.

Lots of this was beautifully ugly, but unfortunately, this whole thing just seemed like a seemingly endless joke with two punchlines, neither which actually worked. I didn't like the style much. Admittedly, I don't care for these period pictures regardless, but Tykwer's visual flare gets downright obscene. As in Run Lola Run (a movie that I seem alone in actively hating), it's a case of style over substance, more specifically style hovering over substance with gigantic gloved hands squeezing the life from its victim. Good costumes, great imagery, a somewhat intriguing story, and wonderful dusty props that lend this some authenticity tangle with oppressive narration and soundtrack, a flatulent bumbling script, unrealized characters, and far too much trickery. Definitely moments (classy nudity, a fun little violent montage) but most the movie failed in making me feel anything at all.

Here I am, probably able to smell myself:

Nosferatu the Vampyre

1979 horror remake

Rating: 16/20

Plot: It's Dracula. A really old pale guy laments the fact that he can't get a girl to like him on account of his silly looking ears. "Cursed! Cursed with these monstrostities [sic]! All the kids on the playground called me Batboy." He mopes around for a while and finally decides to go to the woodshed to fashion himself some wicked fangs with the use of an electric sander. He then falls in love with the sander and injures himself during attempted intercourse. Blaming his misfortune on Black and Decker (Franz Black and Hans Decker, the guys at the local hardware store who sold him the discount sander from the clearance aisle), he seeks revenge. Or a good manicurist. He ends up getting a haircut instead and regretting it instantly. He takes a trip on a boat to forget his troubles and befriends several rats. Together, they produce their own musical comedy--"The Frantic Athletic Cup". They're booed fiercely during the first show, tossed from the boat, and spend the rest of the movie regretting every decision they've ever made.

This is probably not as good as the original 20's Murnau version (I think...it's been a while) but it is infinitely better (well, twice better) than the Coppola thing, despite the substitution of Tom Waits for the annoying giggling Renfield in this one. The annoying giggling Renfield delivered one of the more laughable acting performances I've ever seen, and the acting was the biggest problem (only problem?) with the film. Werner Herzog produced two simultaneous versions--one in English and one in German--and the heavily-accented English combined with this oddly tired, confused acting really made the English version difficult to watch in parts. I watched snippets of the German version, and it didn't seem much better though. The movie was also a little choppy; you could tell scenes were hurried (one take only, probably due to a combination of budget, the need for two language versions, and time). The individual scenes themselves, however, were almost perfect. Kinski is as good as anybody who's seen Kinski would think he'd be in this role. He's got the eyes for the part, and his timing is so perfect in the elongated, tension-filled scenes. His presence completely overwhelms the scenes he's in. And with the imagery and set design, there's enough to look at to make up for the story we already know and the acting we wish we could ignore. The castle in this is perfect and haunting. Herzog paints with shadows and somber colors, and by slowing down scenes, he creates an almost hypnotic tension if not something completely terrifying. Almost every scene with Kinski is beautiful, but my favorite image is during the great "pestilence" chapter, a scene featuring a "last supper" with a family feasting while in the company of scuttling rats. There's also some really sexy mummies and a nicely choreographed pall bearer dance scene. Great rats though. It adds backbone to my theory that Werner Herzog (my favorite director) could direct animals as well as people. (See: the monkeys at the end of Aguirre, the defecating camel at the end of Dwarves, the dancing chicken at the end of Stroyzek.) This could have been the greatest horror movie ever made, and it is one of the best remakes of all time.

Look! I'm terrified!

The Edukators

2004

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Three pretentious revolutionaries show their disgust for capitalism by breaking into the homes of the rich, rearranging all of the furniture and decor without stealing anything, and leaving a note saying "Your days of plenty are numbered." Their relationships become strained when one break-in leads to a kidnapping.

Aside from misspelling the title of the movie, this started out fine with security shots of one of those horrible rich family's homes before the aforementioned horrible rich family arrives home to discover that their stuff has been shuffled. The interior shots of staked chairs and porcelain figurines in the toilet, almost like dadaist art, are funny. From there, unfortunately, it's downhill. A bloated movie with dialogue that felt like it was being delivered from a pulpit instead of from characters in a film. I enjoyed the parts of the movie that were about the relationships of the three characters, even when those become a bit convoluted, but all the "We say we want a revolution, well, you know, we all want to change the world" stuff was pretty draining. None of the characters grew on me although I did think two of them were really attractive. The direction was too modern and too sure of itself, but there's some beautiful nature happening (and it's shot very well) when they retreat to one of the character's uncle's cabins. With a softer hand, this could have bordered on great.

Note: Apparently an American remake of this is planned.

I survived an unfortunate spoon-to-the-eye mishap and made it to the end of this lengthy film:

Tuvalu

1999 German nearly-silent futuristic fairy tale

Rating: 15/20

Plot: An ugly blind man, his ugly wife, and their uglier son try to save a dilapidated bath house from demolition and the threat that it could be replaced by something that isn't a bath house. Anton, the ugly son, falls in love with the smell of Bjork's undergarments and eventually gets to see her swimming naked with a fish. Ostensibly, there is a woody (i.e. hard-on). Unfortunately, tragedy strikes and Bjork seeks the thuggish and more than likely shaggy arms of a slippery-lookin' devil named Gregor (also ugly), and Anton has to simultaneously fight for the love of the pop star and for the survival of his family's bath house.

Tuvalu is quirky, gorgeously filmed, and almost too precious for its own good. The set design, with a multi-storied bath house with crumbling walls and a labyrinth of rusting pipes looked like something straight from a Mad Max movie, apocalyptic and at times nightmarish while somehow always remaining whimsical and beautiful. The feel of the set was further enhanced by the use of both old school black 'n' white and old school color, lots of sepia tones for the indoors scenes and lots of off-blues for the water and outdoors scenes, both used as an homage to silent movies. Both the colors and the set, the herky-jerky plot, the use of ugly European actors, the lopsided cinematography and weird close-ups of the ugly actors' faces, and the dry humor were all reminiscent of Delicatessen, so much in fact that I probably should have deducted points for the blatant rip-off. Oh, and the overly-exaggerated sound effects--lots of creaking and squeaking. The film had no dialogue other than various grunts and squeals and the occasional uttered name, and this, with all the sepia and the Chaplinesque slapstick, recalls the silent film era. Parts of this cross the line into way-too-silly territory, but it's a fun, very French little fairy tale of a German movie that I'm glad I got to see.

Here's a picture of an ugly person with Bjork followed by a picture of an ugly person watching Tuvalu:

Pandora's Box

1930 German Pabst silent melodrama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: This is the tragic story of a woman's face and three too many erections.

Another moody, bleak one. I thought the storytelling was a little sloppy and about 30 minutes too long. The sloppiness may be part of the point as Lulu (the "Pandora") and the poor unfortunate souls she comes in contact are pummeled with life and circumstances that seem random and unfair but are almost entirely the result of Louise Brooks and her pretty pretty eyes. This was decidedly modern--in the camera's movements and in almost all of the acting, the lilts and gapes of the former and the uncharacteristic (for the time and genre) lack of pomp of the latter. Brooks herself was fantastic, and she needed to be considering the amount of time the camera would focus on her face. It's also amazing how few title cards were needed to carry the plot--the actions of the story did it just fine. This is one of those silent pictures in which the silence really helps create the atmosphere for a lot of the scenes. Bleakly, the darkness grows progressively in this until it almost becomes suffocating, all the way to the point when the piled-on sins of the characters become deadly.

Trivia: First lesbian role in motion picture history

Speaking of lesbians, here's a big ol' lesbian checking out Lulu's curves in Pandora's Box: