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!"

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

2009 black comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: This is the story, loosely based on a true story, of Brad, a guy who loses his mind after his mother serves him Jello one too many times and ends up killing her with a sword. He barricades himself in their house with a pair of hostages while a pair of detectives work on piecing together possible motives and look for a way to get to him.

This isn't a true collaboration exactly, but it certainly feels like one. And for this viewer, it's a David Lynch/Werner Herzog collaboration is a collaboration made in heaven. Or in the subconscious of a schizophrenic maybe. Lynch apparently had very little to do with this, but Herzog pays homage to the producer with a few scenes--a random gas mask, a couple really strange scenes where the actors freeze and break the fourth wall by staring into the camera for a long enough time to make me kind of uncomfortable, conversations about coffee, and a little fellow in a tuxedo. Oh, wait. Herzog uses little people, too. The acting reminded me more of Lynch's characters than Herzog's, speaking in those slightly-off cadences, stilted almost, and somewhat unnatural. I'm not sure if this works as a drama, and anybody watching this as a Law and Order type thing might be disappointed. I caught on quickly enough that this is more dark comedy than crime thriller/drama, more a glimpse at the world as seen through the eyes of somebody with a damaged mind than anything realistic. And who better to show us that world than Werner Herzog? Flashbacks, especially anything having to do with Brad Dourif's Uncle Ted, seem so insubstantial and too dopey to be real, but they work to add up to what gets to the heart of the crime--that Brad is one cuckoo mo-fo. Could that have been explained more naturally? Of course, but it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun. At times, I'll admit, this almost seems like a parody of both Herzog and Lynch's work. Those Uncle Ted scenes, the use of animals, the aforementioned unnatural acting, a character losing his mind in South America, chickens doing something crazy, God as a canister of oatmeal, all those conversations that seem so detached from anything that matters, and so on. I suppose folks who enjoy a chunk of either directors' filmographies will find something to dig in this one. It's probably not essential, more like a limerick or some other nonsense verse written about insanity rather than the poetic look at insanity that Aguirre is. But it is very entertaining. The title, a full sentence by the way, still makes me laugh. I don't see how a person can read that title and think that this is a serious attempt to make a crime drama.

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call--New Orleans

2009 sequel to Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Terence McDonagh, a cop in New Orleans, gets a promotion, a good thing since this movie couldn't have Lieutenant in the title without it. But Terence starts to turn bad, another good thing since Bad is also in the title. With drugs, stolen paraphernalia, more drugs, gambling, drugs, and lizards, McDonagh beings to lose it. Then he completely loses it, stumbling to find a way to end a downward spiral.

I had my doubts about this one, especially since Herzog's other venture into the mainstream (Rescue Dawn) kind of stunk. But Werner works his voodoo magic here, throwing us something contemporary and oft-mainstream but with a tasty helping of the wonderfully bizarre. There is one scene in particular that I can say is unequivocally the best thing I have ever seen in my life and quite possibly the best scene in the history of film. No, I'm not exaggerating. It's a scene I immediately rewound to watch a second time, watched several more times while the dvd was still in my possession, and have Youtubed at least two times since returning the dvd. It's the type of scene that you think about a couple days after watching the movie and start having one of those religious experiences where you can't stop giggling and when somebody interrupts the religious experience with a stupid question, you snap at him and tell him that if he pulls that crap again, you'll stab him right in the neck. I wish I could tell you more about the scene, but telling you more about the scene would spoil it. Of course, it's impossible to write about this movie without talking about the enigmatic genius of Nicolas Cage, one of America's greatest living actors. Also unequivocally, I can say that this is one of the best acting performances of the decade. Cage brings the weird and he brings it hard, a perfect fit for Herzog's skewed visions, much much closer to a sort of neo-Kinski than to National Treasure's Ben Gates. There aren't too many actors, and maybe not a single other actor, who could have played unhinged and out-of-control so well, and I don't think there are many actors who could have pulled off the comic aspects of the character that are hidden below the surface of this drama. His performance is so physical. He contorts his body (the character has back problems), moves like a madman, and says so much his eyes in this movie, another quality that reminds me of Klaus Kinski. I can't say enough about Cage's performance here, but I can say (unequivocally) that I hope he's in another Herzog movie before he starts filming Ghostrider 3. Even without an appearance of Harvey Keitel's little Harvey and a bunch of over-the-top Christian symbolism, this is easily the better Bad Lieutenant movie. Don't miss it!

Grizzly Man

2005 crazy person documentary

Rating: 17/20

Plot: For thirteen summers, Timothy Treadwell had ventured into Alaska to hang out with grizzly bears and foxes. During his later trips, he even videotapes himself with the bears. Several times, he tells his camera that he would die for these bears, and then, as if to prove that he's not just all talk, he and his girlfriend Amy are devoured by a bear he nicknamed Grumpy.

On a technical level, putting all of Treadwell's footage and Herzog's interviews into something this cohesive and meaningful is quite the achievement. I really like how Herzog focuses on the smaller aspects of Treadwell's story. The Cliff Notes version of this is that Treadwell and his girlfriend were eaten by a bear and that it was really gruesome. But Herzog gives us a much more complete picture of this nutty guy. He's much more than just a victim of a bear attack. My favorite moments from the interviews and from Treadwell's footage are the ones that are almost insignificant to the actual story--details about him working in a restaurant, his parents holding his stuffed bear, Timothy discussing his sexuality, lingering shots of the Alaskan landscape. Treadwell's footage is both haunting and sad, haunting as we see some of his last moments on earth and hearing him earlier seem to predict his death, and sad as we get such intimate glimpses into the soul of this tortured and pretty unstable guy. There's definitely some weirdness in this documentary, so much that I can understand why a lot of people might be put off by the whole thing or even think the entire thing is an elaborate hoax. Herzog's narration is often goofy and far from objective. He unapologetically shifts from documentarian to commentator several times. A lot of the interviews seem rehearsed and unnatural, as does a "candid" moment when the coroner gives Timothy's friend the watch that was found on his arm. I have no doubt that there was some coaching involved and that Herzog is guilty of creating a great deal of this reality, but I'm not sure that matters much. You also get such a disturbing picture of Timothy in his films, from the faux-action stuff where he's running around like an adventure seeker to the times when he completely spazzes out and turns himself inside out so that his internal dialogue is on full display, that he doesn't seem like he could possible have been a real person. There's an absurdity to all of this, and Timothy Treadwell was an absolutely absurd human being, but you're not going to get a more chillingly complete picture of this sort of obsessive personality. It's easy to see some parallels between subject and director here. This is dense stuff. The horrors and beauties makes Grizzly Man the type of movie that will bounce around your noggin for a long, long time after you've shut it off.