Change Your Image
andygaschler
Reviews
Werner - Gekotzt wird später! (2003)
Really a big surprise
WERNER is a German comic figure created by Rötger Feldman a.k.a. "Brösel" that had its first appearance in a comic book in 1981.
The comics merge the very original experiences of "Brösel's" own youth with bikes ("Schüsseln"), beer ("Bölkstoff") and the sufferings and joys as a plumber-apprentice (in a northern-German handicraft business) with the constant use of an explicit, wonderfully direct and idiomatic language into comic experiences which best reflect crucial aspects of the northern-German "way of life".
The first movie hit the big screen in the early 1990s and was a huge success (and when I say huge, I mean HUGE!). I was in elementary school then and not a single classmate had missed this one...the songs of the soundtrack were enthralling for us and you could listen to them everywhere. The first movie had a strong "comic appeal", a sense for the typical humour that had already made the comic-books that successful. Everything (except the non-animated sequences thrown in between) was fine and in the right place: The animation was full of lovely details (including images of the landscape), the contents were imaginative, the voices including fine variations of typical northern-German idioms were a helluva fun to listen to (catching the edgy aspects of the characters), the soundtrack was rocking.
Then, in 1996 and 1999, the follow-up-movies nos 2 and 3 came out, and they sucked. Not that the animations weren't professional (indeed they were, also making use of new technical standards like the computer generated images)...but, well, these were not the edgy, sometimes ferocious adventures of WERNER the fans fell in love with. These films were more like a smoothed, a soft version of Werner that failed to create any kind of originality and atmosphere. I guess that it was a fatal mistake not to base those movies on any of the hilariously funny and anarchic comics. Just way too conventional (at least for my taste)...
After 2 and 3, I had up to no hope for the 4th installment of the series, thinking it could only get worse. This was the first WERNER I had not seen at the movies, but waited until it was aired on TV.
To my big surprise (and against the opinions of many of the critics), this was not a new mess destroying the monument of WERNER, but a movie very much in the vein of the first one: Anarchic, powerful, full of punning!!! The figures were allowed to be themselves again, to behave more reckless, to drink beer and vomit if necessary, to disregard any tempo limits and also the laws of gravity...Yes, this was WERNER again, not a smoothed clone as in episodes 2 and 3. This was the original character again.
To sum this up: Everyone who liked the first movie will like this one, too. Give it a chance, you'll certainly be rewarded.
Die Sturmflut (2006)
How awful
After having watched the first hour of this "completely underdeveloped script turned into a movie"-experience I can warn anyone against waisting time for such a cliché-ridden trip. Well, how do you set up your average "if mother nature unleashes her forces of destruction-epic? - You take a tragic love story; - the dog (or any other animal) that gets terribly nervous in face of the upcoming mayhem and ... - The persons that fail to realize and act upon the danger.
Some humour added, and you would have the perfect PERFECT STORM / Armageddon / DANTES PEAK / VOLCANO - spoof...
Avoid it whenever you can!
Minority Report (2002)
Spielberg at his best
Would you like to live in a world in which formal, procedural justice is of no value anymore? Where so-called Precogs tell the police department when and where a crime might/will happen so that troops can be send out to arrest the criminal-in-spe before he or she has committed the crime? This is an ugly world as justice depends upon dubious visions, not on the opinion of a judge, a trial jury based on legally founded proofes. The old fundament of criminal law - IN DUBIO PRO REO - is dismantled here.
What is left is a world where anybody can become the victim of these "visions", without being able to find out if he'll ever come in the situation to do what he's alredy punished for.
PHIL K. DICK's stories are splendid sci-fi-tales that show us where our existing civilizations with their well-balanced systems might be woundable, picks on one of these possible wound and reveals the nightmarish outcoming of certain "wrong developments".
The movie has not only a great main theme which is the loss of human dignity and fair trial in a world of tomorrow, it also features great "supporting pillars" as the value of family. It comes up with some very stylish set pieces, great action sequences as well as an unforgettable finale which makes your neck-hairs bristle. Deeply satisfying on all levels!
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
Only 7.4?
I can't believe this movie only scores 7.4! This surely ranks up with the best of Hitchcock's movies such as VERTIGO or MARNIE. The only reason I can think of why the score is so low, is that for the most part, THE MAN... renounces violence and certainly won't get a diploma in "sex and crime".
What it derives its tension from is not violence, it's the reckless energy of these criminals that take a child from his parents and are ready to kill the kid if the operation fails. Today, having seen a lot of hardboiled kidnapping movies as Mel Gibson's RANSOM, this seems normal, but in the 1950s, where family was all in contemporary America, the thought of such a crime surely has stirred up emotions a lot.
And this tension still works for me, today. Yeah, these guys are selfish, ignorant bastards, disturbing in how they act: It's a deal for them, and they want to be "good businessmen", disregarding the fact that business here is kidnapping kids and assassinating politicians in the opera!!
What makes the movie great, however, are the creative aspects, the kinky ideas of Hitchcock, the outrageously disturbing scene in the church (which brings it to the viewer's attention how alone, how abandoned the protagonists are, nobody caring, nobody helping, the people in the church just going home...), the meeting with the owner of that shop stuffing and preparing dead animals (which stresses the somewhat "oriental" flair the movie has from the opening scenes abroad), last not least the role of MUSIC in this movie.
Music is the key principle here, as ***SPOILER*** the assassination of the targeted politician is to be done exactly in the moment of a loud orchastra tutti/gong; so Hitchcock lets the camera follow the orchestra score and you now it will happen in a second ***BANG*** And then, of course, DORIS DAY singing Que sera, which became more famous than the movie itself; she sings it to notify the kid of his parents being in the embassy...
All in all: A classic!!