Cave of Forgotten Dreams

2010 cave painting documentary

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Werner Herzog and a bunch of boring people go into a cave to look at some paintings a child probably drew. See, they didn't have refrigerators in France 32,000 years ago, so cave parents just had their children draw on the walls. I'm not even a paleontologist, but I could figure that out. I have no idea why Werner Herzog didn't interview me for this movie.

This didn't thrill me, but it was nice seeing these pictures, the oldest human drawings we know of, even if it was just in boring old 2D. Some would say that Werner Herzog's narration gets in the way of his documenting, and although any of the 4 1/2 readers of this blog know exactly what I have to say about that, I thought his script here reached a bit. The outside-the-cave shots are really beautifully filmed. The inside-the-cave ones looked weird on my television, kind of wavy or something, probably the result of the 3D stuff. This didn't keep my interest for the duration, but it was worth watching.

I could probably paint a horse better than these people though. So overrated.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

1972 movie

Rating: 19/20

Plot: Mr. Aguirre leads an expedition with his pals to find gold. It's an almost identical plot to Disney's The Huffalump Movie except it takes place in South America in the 16th Century. And Tigger has been replaced with a crazy man.

Cinematic poetry! My favorite movies are those that are uncategorizable, and although Aguirre, the Wrath of God is very clearly a movie, it's just not a movie that is like a lot of other movies. Werner Herzog's penchant for filming in impossible locales and his eye for filming those locales very well makes the Peruvian rain forest just as important as any character in this thing. In fact, since you don't really get to see much of the natives who attack Aguirre and his posse, at times it almost seems like the conflict is with the setting. The location is hauntingly beautiful, violent, and lawless and adds to this mysterious feel that pervades the film. The wonderful Popol Vuh score also contributes to that feel. Herzog not only has an eye for filming on location, he's got a willingness to allow his camera to film happy accidents, to deviate from the script and allow some of the fringe details to evolve spontaneously. One of my favorite of these moments is an extended--and seemingly pointless--scene with a guy jamming on a pan flute thing while Aguirre stands next to him. He allows the story to meander, and the story, I think, is more mythic and more mysterious because of it. Klaus Kinski's performance is a scary one even though this isn't anything like a horror movie. He's the perfect picture of madness, delusional and paranoid and megalomaniacal. As I've probably typed in these pages before, it all starts with Kinski's eyes. But as Aguirre, he's required to do so much physically, like Nic Cage in the Bad Lieutenant movie. Aguirre often seems more insect than human, walking with an awkward limp and a hunched back and with an expression on his countenance that makes it look like his mind hurts. I love his performance here, and knowing a little of the legends behind the filming of it (see: My Best Fiend or watch Aguirre with Herzog's commentary) adds a new dimension. Herzog is always good with endings, and the denouement of Aguirre is memorable and moving, definitely one of my favorite movie endings ever. It's one of those cases where you think, "How was this even filmed?" but then you just stop thinking about it and decide to just be glad it was.


I don't want to alienate my four and a half readers, but I've thought about making a rule that there are certain movies you just have to watch if you want to read my blog. This would definitely be one of those movies. I've decided not to make that rule, by the way, but you should see this movie anyway so that you can see Klaus Kinski pick up a monkey. That's something that every cinemaphile needs to see.

Mister Lonely

2007 Harmony Korine film

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A lonely Michael Jackson impersonator living in France meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator who lives on an island with a bunch of other celebrity impersonators. Her husband is Charlie Chaplin and daughter is Shirley Temple. Also occupying the island are the Three Stooges, Sammy Davis Jr. Abraham Lincoln, James Dean, a Pope, Madonna, Queen Elizabeth, Buckwheat, and Little Red Riding Hood. Michael Jackson decides to live with them, and they work together to put on a fantastic stage show. Meanwhile, a priest in South America teaches his nuns to fly.

Well, it's Harmony Korine's best movie yet. His work is still just a little unhinged, a little uneven, a little too silly. There are large chunks of this movie and single shots that are really brilliant. It's sprinkled with great, unforgettable imagery that is either bizarrely poignant or poignantly bizarre. Korine's either got a good eye or is developing one (I can't remember Julien Donkey-Boy that well and have intentionally forgotten the dismally awful Gummo), and there are a lot of Herzogian moments in Mister Lonely. Werner himself plays the priest (he was also in Donkey-Boy, Korine and he apparently have a mutual respect for each other). There's something about watching Buckwheat giving the Pope a bath or the Three Stooges shooting sheep that is endlessly entertaining. And most of the scenes with the nuns are really beautiful. But just like Gummo, this sort of has that weird for the sake of weird thing that makes it seem more masturbatory than artistic. If I could figure out what it all adds up to, I think I'd like it a lot more, but I'm not really convinced it even adds up to anything at all. Lots to like--the raw originality, the odd beauty, some great music--but it's just not enough. Channel it, Harmony!

Encounters at the End of the World

2007 documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Werner Herzog ventures to the unforgiving landscape of Antartica to discuss humanity's inevitable extinction with philosopher/fork lift drivers and other "professional dreamers."

Herzog captures rare breeds and gives us their stories on our big and small screens. He asks questions that have no answers and then gets answers. "Why is it that a sophisticated animal like a chimpanzee does not take advantage of inferior animals? He could straddle a goat and ride off into the sunset." This, as Herzog says, is not another movie about penguins. It's a movie about mankind dreaming its way straight into extinction and is a profoundly moving, if kind of odd, experience. Some of the photography is stunning, but you can get that sort of thing elsewhere. What this offers is Herzog's unique blend of found art--the ability he has to find the surreal hidden in the mundane--and his philosophical ramblings. His narration, although I could listen to his voice for hours, is at times oppressive. He cuts off one interviewee's story with a "to make a long, drawn-out story short" and another one's with "her story goes on forever." This is a fantastic companion piece to Fata Morgana, and it's cool to see that Herzog's modus operandi hasn't changed all that much in the 35+ years since he made that one. Lots of moments in this one which will require a second viewing, but I loved the interaction with an aloof penguin expert: "I tried to keep the conversation going. 'Dr. Ainly, I read soemwhere that there are gay penguins."

Lessons of Darkness

1992 science-fiction documentary

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Herzog films burning oil fields in Kuwait and the workers trying their best to put the fires out.

Entirely engrossing piece here. Herzog narrates (at first, I thought, unnecessarily) and places the burning oil fields in a different context, almost like a disturbingly cautionary sci-fi movie, capped by a disturbing final line that for whatever reason stuck with me until I went to sleep. The imagery is spectacular, almost like a mixture of 2001 and somebody's home video of their vacation to hell. Swirling operatic music accompanies the startling nightmarish images of apocalypse, and it's all very very effective.

Fata Morgana

1971 oddball documentary

Rating: 14/20 (but could quite easily be a little bit higher or way lower)

Plot: None really. Herzog films lots of stuff, mostly, I'm guessing, in Africa. He films jets landing, desert landscapes, mirages, the carcasses of airplanes or other vehicles, the bones of dead animals, people in goggles, people without goggles, some animals, and some unidentifiable things. He throws it all together in three parts titled Creation, Paradise, and The Golden Age. Throw a female voice narrating a creation myth and some weird poetry and you've got yourself a documentary!

One of the most bizarre documentaries I've ever seen, Fata Morgana (Mirages, apparently) is sort of like a low-budget Koyaanisqatsi mixed with Errol Morris's glimpses at eccentrics. I'm not sure it all adds up to much; it really looks more like a dada-documentary or something. But it does have some moments of true beauty and even more of those fantastically entertaining "What the heck?" moments and it's for the most part entertaining. And it does capture this world that may only exist in Herzog's editing room but that is nevertheless worth exploring. This documentary seems to become more and more unhinged as it progresses although there's not exactly anything normal about starting out with five or so minutes of airplanes landing and following it up with the weird creation myth and images that seem to have nothing to do with that creation myth. But by the end, you've got the natives pointing and looking confused, a strange musical duo (a pimp on drums and distorted vocals and a woman on piano) that according to the commentary was filmed at a brothel, a guy with a ukulele who can't control his laughter as another guy reads poetry, and a turtle expert who informs us about where the food enters and leaves the turtle. And those goggles in the above picture with the guy holding the lizard? Herzog forced those goggles upon no less than three people he encountered. I rewatched some of this with commentary provided by Herzog, some other guy, and Crispin Glover. It was not exactly enlightening.

The Grand

2007 improvisational comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Poker players converge on Jack Faro's The Rabbit's Foot casino for a winner-take-all ten million dollar poker tournament.

There's lots of talent in this one--David Cross, Harrelson, Michael McKean, Dennis Farina, Larry David's t.v. wife, Kotter, even Chris Parnell--and a few criminally unfunny ones. That's right, Raymond, I'm looking in your direction. There's also some neat cameos from poker celebrities (I especially liked seeing Doyle Brunson) although Phil Gordon, a poker player/commentator I actually like, overdoes it a whole bunch. It's a good ensemble cast with lots of eccentric goofball characters, most notably The German played by none other than Werner Herzog. There's a guy who, although his talents are behind the camera, needs to be in front of the camera more. Not necessarily in Harmony Korine movies though. The German talking about his need to kill something every day or looking for his pet bunny after his ousting from the tournament are hilarious. (A cut scene in which he reveals a secret he's discovered after travelling the world would have been the funniest bit in the movie.) The problem with The Grand is that there's far too much focus on the numerous subplots (relationships with fathers, attempts to save The Rabbit's Foot, the announcer's book, Raymond's worries about his fantasy football team) and not enough on the players doing their thing at the tables. When the jokes work, it's like flopping a flush, but when they fall flat, which they very often do, the feeling is more like having your opponent hit his three-outer on the river to take the rest of your stack. The poker in this, by the way, doesn't make a lot of sense. A movie pet peeve of mine is where chess doesn't make sense in movies, and although the poker looked real enough, the decisions these "professional" players were making annoyed me.

Jen didn't stay awake for the entirety of this one.

I had to give it a bonus point just for getting to her Werner Herzog say, "I've had a goat. To strangle a goat. . .that makes you feel really alive."

I recently watched this again, laughing more the second time, I think, than the first. I own this movie and couldn't find another comedy to watch. I feel bad for writing bad stuff about Phil Gordon. He's fine here, and so is Michael Karnow as his obnoxious co-host who sells his own books on his poker systems. There is a lot of inside poker humor that might not appeal to people who don't play the game, but there's really enough kookiness for the whole family. And Herzog! Man, I had to watch a couple of his scenes twice.

Rescue Dawn

2006 Vietnam War prison camp escape movie

Rating: 11/20



Plot: One of the Batmen has his plane shot down over Vietnam while on a top secret bombing run. Despite his brilliance in hiding beneath giant leaves, he's captured and tortured and sent to a prison camp. With Charles Manson and a few other scrawny, shaggy prisoners, he plots his escape.

The best thing about this was the foliage. There are some beautiful soft greens and jagged greens in this, and Herzog once again shows off an ability to shoot landscape that it's easy to take for granted. Unfortunately, this bloated piece of Hollywood drivel is atypical of Herzog and really disappointing because of it. It's got the music, the big name, the action, the humor, the dialogue, and everything else you can expect from a larger budget American war picture. Christian Bale gives what is probably the worst performance I have seen this year. All things considered. He made the dog who played Underdog look pretty good anyway. His stumbling performance and the uncharacteristic stumbling direction made this one a real disappointment. Werner Herzog needs to stick to movies that end with animals. This one has an animal doing a trick (scene with a dog) but it's in the middle of the movie. Previously, he made a documentary called Little Dieter Needs to Fly, so apparently Herzog feels a connection to this true-ish story. Either that or there was the promise of a big paycheck. These war prison escape flicks have been done so much before with much better results.

Note: Werner Herzog has apparently found himself a new midget.

Here's a picture of me being disappointed in this film:

The Terror of Tiny Town

1938 midget musical western extravaganza

Rating: 6/20 (But as you know, I apply bonus points for certain features--puppets, nudity, Klaus Kinski, etc. This one got all kinds of bonus points for having handlebar mustaches and midgets. With the bonus points, I'd actually have to give this a 34/20. That is, if I counted it all up correctly.)

Dylan's rating: 12/20

Plot: Bat Haines, a midget villain, is wreaking midget havoc as he plots to take over the midget town called Tiny Town. In midget cahoots with the midget sheriff, he attempts to take advantage of a midget feud between two midget families. It's sort of like a Hatfield and McCoy thing. But a midget version. Meanwhile, the lovely Nancy Preston arrives in town to stay with her midget uncle. The hero, one Buck Lawson (a midget) shares a midget picnic with her shortly after saving her from certain midget death by stopping her out-of-control midget stagecoach. The midget uncle and Buck's midget father gets all up in his midget grill (sort of like a Romeo and Juliet thing...but a midget version) and the midget Bat Haines gets a chance to put his midget plan in action.

The plot, sets, acting, dialogue, action scenes, musical numbers, and almost every other aspect of this movie is typical of really bad, B-Westerns. The only difference is that the film's cast is made up entirely of midgets. And maybe some children. It was hard to tell. The only other movie I've seen with a cast of all little people is Even Dwarfs Started Small which, for my money, is a superior all-midget movie. Most of this one is straight-shootin' although there are some really terrible puns and some sight gags (two midgets playing a bass, midgets walking under saloon doors, Dylan's favorite scene involving a midget chasing around a duck). It's worth the investment just to see the midgets riding Shetland ponies around and for the midget fisticuffs during the edge-of-your-seat climax. Trust me. Movie magic!

Note: The title credits called the cast "Jed Buell's midgets". I wondered if this guy traveled around with a midget entourage. Picture that in your head for a moment. Pretty intimidating stuff.

Note: It seems that almost all of the cast of The Terror of Tiny Town were Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz which came out the following year. At least one midget had a fairly distinguished career. Billy Curtis, who played the hero, acted in over 90 television shows and movies. According to Wizard lore, Judy Garland made reference to the Munchkins as "little drunks," partially because Curtis wouldn't stop flirting with her. I don't know for sure (and neither are around to verify or discredit), but I bet he hit that.

Here's a chronological list of Billy's cinema and television credits: The Hero, Hercules the Midget, Munchkin, Midget, Midget, Midget Judge, Papoose, Bodyguard (in Hellzapoppin'), Midget, Melinda the Chimp, Major the Midget, Midget driver, Eddie a Midget, Midget in Wings, Newsboy, Vaudeville Midget, Midget, Midget, "Baby" Joe (midget), Midget musician, Dugan, Man, Midget Barker, Little Man, Captain Rudolph del Nemo, Mighty Mite, Billy Curtis (midget), Little Man, Makuba (Jungle Jim in Pygmy Island), Midget in Deli, Mole-Man, Midget in Agent's Office, The Laughing Badman, Gino, Clown, Slim (Midget Carinival Employee), Tut, Big Executive, Circus Midget Clown, Damu, One of Hermine's Midgets, Midget at county fair, Midget (The Incredible Shrinking Man), Harry Earles (Midget Actor), Super Pup/Bark Bent, Harry, Charlie McCarthy, Captain Borcher, Martian, Colonel Petite, Mascot, Monk Carter, Danny, Newsboy, Big Mike the bartender, Midget, The Man from Flush, Midget (The Monkees), Augie, Spaceman #3 (The Beverly Hillbillies), Gypsy, El Lobo-Ito, Jack O'Lantern (Bewitched), Small copper-skinned ambassador (Star Trek), Child Ape (Planet of the Apes), Edmund B. Ratner, Johnson, Lucy and Ma Parker (?), Toy cowboy, Arizona (Gunsmoke), Mordecai (High Plains Drifter), Slick Bender, Toulouse, Secret Service Man, Charlie P., Roger Robot (Laverne and Shirley), Menchkin, General Voomak, Little Person, Barnaby, Jack, Elf 2, Teddy's Voice, Reverend Lynch, and Creature. It should also be noted that Billy Curtis was the only person who ever played McDonalds' Mayor McCheese. They got rid of the character after Curtis's death in 1989. I'm thinking very seriously of trying to see as many movies with Billy Curtis in them as I possible can.

Here I am (regular-sized person):

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!