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.