List Price: $26.98 Our Price: $24.28YOU SAVE $2.7!
Buy it
DVD Invincible
Only Werner Herzog could turn the factual story of Invincible into a timeless allegorical fable. This is unmistakably a Herzog film--the director's first narrative feature in a decade--exposing evil in the stage show hosted by the cynical occultist Hanussen (Tim Roth), whose Berlin nightclub entertains Nazi officers on the eve of Hitler's rise to power. This arena of pre-Holocaust amusement is ill-prepared for the disruptive influence of Zishe (Jouko Ahola), a burly Polish blacksmith recruited to play a strongman in Hanussen's act. When Zishe announces his Jewishness to the crowd, thus attracting a Jewish audience to Hanussen's Aryan enclave, his simple act of bravery represents a pivotal affront to Nazi pride, with entirely unexpected results. Finnish body-builder Ahola is Herzog's daring experiment--a nonactor (and it shows) whose likable nature is starkly contrasted with Roth's manipulative malevolence. As Zishe so innocently demonstrates, resistance may be hazardous, but it's not always futile. --Jeff Shannon
This is Herzog's first feature film in a while. I know he has recently moved to Los Angeles and apparently loves it. It may show in his film. This is his glossiest production to date. As opposed the the outdoors, where he is usually fond of filming, most of the action here takes place in Hanussen's Theater of the Occult. The picture is in English, which allows us the wonderful performance by Tim Roth. Herzog shows Hanussen as a kind of villain, yet he is too much like Herzog himself - someone who uses hypnosis, lies, and great imagery to put on a spectacular show.
Neophytes might be a bit put off by the overdubbing of some of the actors, but that is a trifle. It is just great to be back in Herzog-land again. Like all of his films, there is a central image that tells the whole story. In this story, it is a remarkable dream sequence of The Invincible helping his little brother over rocks (WWII) through a sea of crabs (the Nazis).
The Return of Herzog
Herzog's return has definitely made me realize how desperate I am to see a movie by a director whose main focus is to explore in films rather than simply entertain an audience. I don't think criticizing the "slowness" of the movie makes any sense, because anyone who's seen Herzog movies knows he doesn't nervously speed through his films, and personally, this is what I admire about him. Patience is something that a film can help us regain, or at least remind us that it is still possible today to be patient. If there is something to criticize, it is the dialogue in certain scenes, which the actors had trouble bringing to life (not Tim Roth). Some of the lines were a shade too sentimental and simple. To be honest, the beginning of the movie was a bit cliche-strong, but by this I mean the first thirty minutes or so. Eventually though, the imagery of the film , and the greater allegory (which wasn't calculated allegory) of Nazi Germany, make up for these minor flaws. The dream sequences are amazing, as well as the set of the clairvoyant, equipped with a tank of jellyfish. I hope that there will be more from this genuine filmmaker in the future, and soon. It is one thing to be patient while watching a movie, and another while waiting for the arrival of another film by a master. It seems patience in the latter case, today, among so many cinematic failures, is almost impossible.
DON'T BOTHER WATCHING THIS ONE!
This is possibly one of the worst films I have ever seen. The writing and acting, as far as I am concerned, are no better than that of a middle school live performance. The only reason I didn't turn it off was that I was hoping SOMETHING in the movie might help me justify spending $10 to buy it used. That something never came. I would never waste my time on this movie when there are others on this topic that so richly deserve my viewing time investment, such as "Schindler's List" & "The Pianist". Trust me, PASS IT UP just as fast as you can!
Werner Herzog has been possibly the most intrepid director I have ever known. He likes to drown in deep waters where the edge conditions are present to break the unthinkable limits.
And this a powerful statement. Fata Morgana is a true jiurney to the desert's sands and still more. He filmed too a very special document around a vulcano just hours before to make eruption in 1977.
So this is an important document; visual and existential.
More Info about this DVD Director(s): Werner Herzog DVD Release Date: Released the 08 January 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $29.98 Your Price: $26.98YOU SAVE $3!
Buy it
With a cast composed entirely of dwarfs, Werner Herzog (Aguirre, the Wrath of God) tells a tale of asylum inmates taking over the asylum. The institution's governor is holed up in his own home with a rebel hostage to keep him company. As the inmates' wrangling for the release of their fellow captive comes to naught, all symbols of ordered society are mocked and brought to a shambles. Typewriters are smashed, flowers are set on fire, a dinner ceremony ends with the slapstick smashing of plates, a monkey is tied to a crucifix and paraded in solemn observance, chickens resort to cannibalism. All vestige of order is disrupted in Herzog's blackly humorous, fatalistic parable, leaving us with nothing but the mad, strident cackling of a dwarf. It's not just that the dwarfs are grotesques,... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Werner Herzog DVD Release Date: Released the 23 November 1999 Usually ships within 24 hours
List Price: $29.99 Your Price: $26.99YOU SAVE $3!
Buy it
Stroszek is one of Werner Herzog's most accessible films, and one of his best. Herzog's clever use of kitschy folk music is just one perfect element in this mesmerizing, seriocomic "ballad" of America, in which a trio of unlikely friends leave their dreary lives in Berlin, certain that wealth and comfort await in America. Their naive American dream turns sour in rural Wisconsin, and the title character (played by Bruno S., the fascinating nonactor from Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser) becomes an insanely tragic figure, celebrating a bitterly absurd Thanksgiving in the film's unforgettable closing scenes. By fusing his own intuitive, enigmatic style with factual details from the life of Bruno S., Herzog captures the elusive "ecstatic truth" that motivates his enduring... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Werner Herzog DVD Release Date: Released the 08 February 2002 Usually ships within 24 hours
List Price: $29.98 Your Price: $26.98YOU SAVE $3!
Buy it
In his widely acclaimed attempt to fathom The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, director Werner Herzog probes a real-life mystery that has puzzled German society for nearly two centuries. In the title role, Herzog ingeniously cast the equally mysterious street musician Bruno S., whose mesmerizing performance is unique in the history of film. Isolated since infancy in a dank cellar, the now-adult Kaspar is abandoned in 1820s Nuremburg by his unknown custodian; townsfolk futilely speculate on his origins, and he's shaped by a bourgeois villager who places rigid, conflicting restraints on his new and peculiar perspective on the world around him. It's telling that Herzog's preferred title is Every Man for Himself and God Against All, for this is an eerily effective cautionary tale about... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Bruno S. - Walter Ladengast - Brigitte Mira Director(s): Werner Herzog DVD Release Date: Released the 08 January 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $29.98 Your Price: $26.98YOU SAVE $3!
Buy it
Director Werner Herzog is obsessed with obsession. Practically all his films feature protagonists in the grip of a passion so powerful that it creates ruin for them and everyone around them. Yet it also creates a sort of tragic grandeur. The viewer feels that, in some strange inexplicable way, it was worth all the pain and suffering involved.
Since his falling out with the major movie studios in his native Germany, Herzog has restricted himself to making documentaries (they're a lot cheaper to produce than dramatic films like Fitzcarraldo or Aguirre), but he brings to them the same passionate commitment and haunting poetic sensibility that informed his famous dramas.
Here the subject is the German-American pilot Dieter Dengler, a man who, as a little boy, fell in love with flight when... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Werner Herzog DVD Release Date: Released the 08 January 2002 Usually ships within 24 hours
List Price: $29.98 Your Price: $26.98YOU SAVE $3!
Buy it
