The 29th Hall of Fame

Goldfinger


"I've heard of shelf tanning, but this is ridiculoush."

I haven't seen many James Bond movies and it's not because I don't like them. Since this one gets so many things right, watching more seems redundant to me. While I prefer the 2006 Casino Royale, mostly for personal reasons like it being my generation's classic James Bond movie, this one is just a heartbeat away. For one, I admire how elegantly the movie is structured. Each set piece from the Miami hotel to Switzerland to Fort Knox is memorable and distinctive, and on top of that, the rides between them are never bumpy (except on the climactic plane trip, of course). The movie transitions to each stage of the story in a way that's seamless, contrivance-free and that makes sense. Also, I doubt this movie invented some of the action movie tropes that so many other movies, TV series and video games produced since employ, but it might as well have for how well it treats them. I'm referring to the henchman/muscle/miniboss that is Harold Sakata's iconic Oddjob and the David and Goliath fight plus ticking clock grand finale, which couldn't have ended in a more James Bond-y way. By that, I mean that the series' adorably cheeky and tongue-in-cheek comedy couldn't be better here, my favorites being Bond's electrocution puns. Oh, and you know what else makes this movie work so well that doesn't seem to get enough credit? Our villain's scheme is, well...pretty darn interesting. Fleming was apparently fascinated by the gold industry - smuggling in particular - and his passion for the subject is a boon for how it makes Goldfinger's plan grounded, believable and certainly more unique than, to quote Dr. Evil in Austin Powers, "do what we always do: hijack some nuclear weapons and hold the world hostage."

Has everything in this movie, particularly how Bond treats women, aged well? Definitely not. Would I change a thing? Also definitely not. In addition to not wanting anyone, especially not myself, to whitewash history, I don't believe that even '60s audiences were expected to approve of everything 007 does. Even when he's at his most heroic, I think we're still supposed to wonder "just who the hell does this guy think he is?" Besides, how could the movie be encouraging such behavior when Bond's seduction attempts are so over the top and tinged with the kind of humor I praised earlier? To sum up, I'm happy to have watched this again, especially since it's been many years since I first watched it, and I enjoyed this viewing as much as that one if not more. Despite what I said earlier, I'm not against getting around to watching more entries in the Bond series that are also considered classics. If I never do, I won't feel that bad because I at least got to watch this one twice.

I watched A Moment of Innocence (1996). Directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the film has a really inventive structure and tells the story in a very interesting, layered way. I enjoyed this nifty little film. I appreciated that the director did something different. Instead of a straight forward, linear documentary or docudrama, he uses the idea of making a film about reenacting an event from when he was 17 twenty years later.

For me, this film touches upon the power of film and how it can help us reflect and make sense of past events, as well as provide some healing from past trauma or regrets. The film does this in a way that feels genuine and never forced. There are a lot of ways a film like this could have gone wrong, but Makhmalbaf does a good job avoiding them. I liked a lot of the dialogue. It felt natural and real. The humour in the film was amusing in a cute way, although never laugh out loud funny. I enjoyed the style of the performances as well.

Although I don't personally consider this film a masterpiece, it is very good, perhaps great, and has a lot to offer the viewer. Glad I saw it, great nomination.

Yay, glad you enjoyed it!

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The Year My Voice Broke is up next for me

Stroszek


Now THIS is riding shotgun!

Even though this is a movie by Werner Herzog, who is an expert at calling out the absurdities of life, I was still surprised to learn this is partially based on a true story. Bruno S. was indeed a street musician who not only spent a lot of time in institutions, but also was subject to the kind of cruel and unusual punishment he describes to Eva. It explains why he gives such a natural, unforced and watchable performance, and with this one and his work in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, it's too bad his acting career fell off after this movie. Natural is how I would describe the majority of this movie, with so many moments coming across as if Herzog started filming without telling the cast. I doubt that Bruno's courtyard performance or Scheitz and his nephew's odd mannerisms would have left as much of an impression otherwise. I also credit Herzog for how he depicts how odd life in America can be from both the perspective of outsiders like our hapless trio and from its citizens. That he does this best wordlessly - well, with words you can understand, anyway - with the auction and dancing chicken finale is the icing on the cake. What's more, when you consider that these and the movie's many other absurdities come at the expense of prostitution, abuse, financial ruin and suicide, it's pretty amazing that it can still be labeled as a comedy.

When I think about my takeaways from this movie, my mind goes in varying directions. When I think about how good of a "best laid plans" story it tells, I then think about how well it pokes fun at American life, and then I consider whether active or passive spiritual death is preferable. The one that matters the most to me, however, is that it doesn't pay to be an outsider, at least as not as much as it used to in our more homogenized modern world. If you don't speak the local language, have an addiction, possess barely any marketable skills, have a talent that most people consider a curiosity or, like Bruno, are unfortunate enough for all of these to apply, if the people around you don't take away your reasons for getting up in the morning, the system will. While I think this is a great movie, it's not perfect. My pet peeves with Herzog's direction of scenes lasting longer than they need to and him often making me unsure of what I'm supposed to be looking at also apply here. What's important, though, is that I want to seek out everything Bruno S. was involved with and wish that Herzog had more comedies in his filmography.

Adam's Apples (Anders Thomas Jensen, 2005)

I don't think anyone will be shocked when I say this wasn't for me. It feels like an HBO pilot from the time to me which is a vibe I didn't dig at the time and probably dig even less now. I think it's trying to do the terrible characters get redeemed by the end thing but I don't really think that happens and the characters aren't really developed enough for that anyway. Like, am I supposed to be happy for the guy who ten minutes before the end of the film was trying to rape someone? and this certainly didn't do enough to make empathize with a nazi. I think the film is maybe a bit morally dubious but its also just kind of boring and why on earth does the score have bits that sound like Danny Elfman??

I picked that bad boy up from the library today since it may be a 3 or 4 day viewing affair. Let's just hope the DVD is not scratched and/or unplayable. For those of you anticipating my writeup: be patient!

This review contains spoilers

I'd be going out on a limb to suggest that Stroszek is Werner Herzog's best film as director, but a case can certainly be mounted. Ironically, this is a film he made on the fly - writing the screenplay in 4 days to make up for dropping Bruno S. from Woyzeck and replacing him with Klaus Kinski. Perhaps this is the way great films are made - without overthinking everything, and instead just working on instinct. Letting the subconscious do all the work. It's a better film than Woyzeck, despite only being meant as a gap-filler on the way to that more planned and scripted production. Like a dream, Stroszek is relevant, yet light and allegorical while still telling a straightforward and meaningful story on it's surface. It's famous for being the film Ian Curtis watched just before committing suicide - and as such, it's final scene has all the more weight and poignancy. It's story starts in Berlin, and then makes it's way to the heart of a cold and capitalistic fictional U.S. town of Railroad Flats.

The film begins as "Der Bruno Stroszek" (Bruno S.) is being released from prison, and he immediately makes his way back to his local haunt where Eva (Eva Mattes) appears figuratively chained to her two pimps, played by Wilhelm von Homburg and Burkhard Driest - and although Bruno is unable to protect her from those violent hoodlums, she takes up with him and the man who looked after Bruno's apartment while he was in prison - the eccentric Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz) - and when Bruno himself becomes the target of these pimps, life begins to become unbearable. Scheitz is migrating to the United States - so it seems a sweet prospect to Bruno and Eva to follow him and make their fortune. The cramped, closed-in and cold spaces of Berlin are swapped for the bright wide-open spaces of the U.S. and Bruno and Eva buy their own house, but after a while, when life doesn't appear to be as easy there as they expected it, the relationship between Bruno and Eva deteriorates and the ever-ready threat of repossession becomes a life-crushing reality.

Stroszek is a film that is barely a shade away from being real life. Most of the actors who appear are either playing themselves, or aren't actors at all, and this includes it's lead, Bruno S. This part-time musician, artist, actor and vulnerable, mistreated middle aged man had already appeared in Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser a few years previously. Herzog had seen him in a documentary called Bruno der Schwarze – Es blies ein Jäger wohl in sein Horn (Bruno the Black - One Day a Hunter Blew His Horn) and seemed assured that he was the right man for that first collaboration. His full name is Bruno Schleinstein, and his mannerisms are uniquely his own - he often goes on tangents, makes gesticulations and is either unnaturally quiet or loud depending on the situation. He was beat very badly as a child, but taught himself how to play a variety of musical instruments and regularly gave small concerts in the back gardens of Germany, all the while supporting himself as a forklift driver. Damaged and sensitive, it's easy to learn what being near the real man would be like, for he has a certain sincerity and real openness to the way he performs his role in the film. His eccentricity explodes in sudden bursts of speech-making which inhabits not only his vocal cords but his whole body.

With him are Eva, who appears unremarkable, and Clemens Scheitz, an old eccentric conspiracy theorist who peddled various "scientific discoveries" to anyone who would listen, but which were anything but scientific discoveries. Many of this man's odd habits are also carried over into the film - such as when he corners a couple of deer hunters to give them a demonstration of "animal magnetism" by attaching electrodes to them and the deer they've killed. He seems like the kind of man who'd be amusing to meet, but intolerable to live with. Other characters in the film, such as mechanic Clayton Szalpinski, are in real life the people they appear as in the film. Some fine-tuning had to be done by Herzog - for example, Szalpinski's Indian helper had to be rehired, having since left after Herzog had last seen them - in fact, he had only worked for Szalpinski for that one day when Herzog met the two and decided they needed to be in this film. The two pimps were basically the men they were playing as well, but Wilhelm Von Homburg (otherwise known as Norbert Grupe) had once been a boxer and in one infamous interview on German television became very well known.


So these real characters play out a film which gives us a devastatingly brutal viewpoint of capitalism in action. When looking at Stroszek, you simply have to confront the final scene in which a destitute Bruno gets on a tourist trap with a shotgun and presumably commits suicide - after which we get a long, careful view of the various sideshows involving animals. Rabbits and ducks bite and peck away for what would be a small treat for them (but which never materialises) and then we get a long, sustained take of a chicken scraping the floor and insistently re-pecking and re-scraping, desperately dancing for that treat - a treat that never comes, despite the frantic way it dances and pecks and scrapes. On and on. It reengages the music and lights, waits and waits for it's treats, trying to force one to appear from the cheap plastic cage it exists in. After a while a sickness starts to swell in your gut, as you recognize yourself in that chicken. On and on and on it goes. It's been taught to perform for meagre returns - and you can imagine what Ian Curtis was thinking while he watched it, before hanging himself. It is a pretty devastating view of modern life - and Herzog's crew all refused to partake in this dark ending to the film. But you have to admit it's effectiveness - especially when you consider Bruno.

On the surface I wouldn't have really thought I'd connect very much with Stroszek, but I did - I thought it was powerful, and all of the fraught non-actors really performed in the film above themselves - you can only credit Herzog himself with bringing that together. Cinematographer Thomas Mauch, who was director of photography for many of Herzog's most famous films, gives us a wonderfully cramped and cold look at the Berlin of the 1970s, and conversely, widens that and and brightens everything for our initial look at the United States. Everything unfolds in a wonderful manner, and as such this is an aspect of the film that also succeeds. Werner's choices of song for the soundtrack of the film are especially easy to read the mood of the film in, and show multiple sides to themselves as they repeat under differing circumstances. It's the song choices that I took away from the film, from Chet Atkins to Sonny Terry and at times Bruno himself. They perfectly complimented everything we saw. Editor Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus worked with Herzog along the same course Mauch did, and had to contend with much unpredictability piecing together something that has crystal clear coherency.

I love the old piano/button accordion - it takes me back to my youth when my German father would play one, and there's something quintessentially old school and talented about anyone who would dare pick one up and learn how to play. When Bruno plays, he changes - for a while he's happy, doesn't seem like he's about to cower in fear, and he doesn't seem to be as defensive or brutally insistent about anything. You can see that he only really finds contentedness inside of that musical envelope. Stroszek takes us outside of it - and into Bruno's real inner sanctum (they filmed in his real apartment) having him abused by a pair of brutes in such a realistic way that the discomfort is palpable. I really admire a film that can transmit all of the emotion and pain it wants us to feel so adroitly, and surely the scenes involving Eva and Bruno being painfully trashed and smashed by these two really work. In the United States then, there is a more gradual fall - with an initial burst of optimism slowly and very aptly lowered and darkened before you're in as much as a depressed funk as poor Bruno is. Everything Herzog wants us to feel with this film he very much does make us feel - and I admire his ability to control an audience like that. It's why I thought this film was so good.

I enjoyed the way the line between reality and fiction was blurred in this film. How little touches like Bruno's fly being wide open in one shot are in the film. I loved the scene in the premature baby ward showing all of the vulnerable babies, and how I realised at that moment how they represent Bruno himself, clinging as they do to whatever he can. The difference in colour of Scheitz's pale, sheltered face in comparison to the Americans he interacts with is striking, as is much of the visual imagery. I loved how many happy accidents occurred that completely fit the production, which, when knitted together, made a completely comprehensible whole. The sadness of Bruno explaining how he used to have to stand with his soiled bedsheet held out while he was beaten (a true story) and the fact that he's comparing this to how he's being made feel in the United States - a failure, because he can't keep up with house and television payments. Punished. Being beaten, not physically, but psychologically. Deserted. Poor. Destitute. Alone. Around him a world where people scratch around in the dirt for scraps. By this time Eva is plowing her trade on the highways, Scheitz arrested for performing a senseless robbery, and Bruno drifts with a shotgun, his car on fire and doing purposeless, driverless circles, until he gets on that ski-lift.

I don't think we necessarily should see Stroszek as bleak as it's finale might make us feel. While I sometimes have trouble with the desolate emptiness of Werner Herzog's films I'm heartened by his collaboration with Bruno, and enjoyed spending time with him. He is indeed a remarkable man, with a rough kind of charm that probably misleads those who initially come into contact with him. He's not as backwards as he seems. Obviously Bruno seems in his element performing in the back alley of a typical old Berlin tenement - and that is something I'm taking away from the film that will live on longer within me than the dancing chicken will, although admittedly, the dancing chicken is hard to shake. He obviously felt the grass was greener over the Atlantic, but learned that in this cruel world, a man as sensitive and damaged as himself will always be preyed upon and someone as accepting and open will attract people willing to exploit him. I'd like to believe that he learned all of that from making this film without having to live it personally. Perhaps the same can be said for all of those who see it as well.

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The Year My Voice Broke



Such an under the radar film, I honestly never heard of this until it was nominated for the HOF. It is such a down to earth film with a real Malick feel for me. The three lead performances are all great, the characters felt genuine and real. The story is a really great coming of age tale and the bond between the two childhood friends is really believable. The score is perhaps the icing on the cake and the film looks really good. Pretty much has everything I like to see in a film. Super impressed

Wow that's a big rating from you, Raul.

Ya I looked I guess it's only my 4th new watch this year that I gave a 4.5 to. Lots of 4s though.

I've been meaning to comment on your review of Das Boot ever since you posted it but work keeps getting in the way, ugh. Glad you liked it and I agree with most everything you said. A few of my thoughts on your thoughts

I didn't like that music either and I was wondering why they had it in the movie? Then a bit later the Captain tells the men to shut off the phonograph and the music stops, so the men were suppose to be listening to the music as opposed to it being a score. I don't know if that scene was in the director's cut or not? I watched the mini series with extra footage.

Me too. I really was hoping to see the men board and get use to the sub and their assignment. I thought maybe the mini series would show that but it didn't.

Yeah this could've been so easy a message/propaganda film, I'm glad it wasn't.

Not the music the men were listening to I don't believe, but part of the score. It first played about 45 minutes in and then about a half hour later. I didn't think it fit but I'm only nitpicking.

OK I see..I guess I don't remember that then.

And in A Moment of Innocence, there were a lot of times when I wondered if characters were acting or were not.

Looking up the story behind the film certainly helps. It won't click with everyone, but I love the film.