Movie Night: The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orléans (2009)

By: börek - September 1st, 2015  Filed under: Filmavond

The_Bad_Lieutenant_Port_of_Call_New_Orleans_2009Sunday September 27th 2015, Movie Night: The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orléans (Werner Herzog, 2009, fiction, 122 minutes). Door opens at 8pm, film begin at 9pm. Free admission.

Wonder of wonders: The Bad Lieutenant remake is not actually bad at all. German film-maker Werner Herzog has taken Abel Ferrara’s 1992 saga by the scruff of the neck, shifted the action from New York to New Orleans and cast Nicolas Cage in the old Harvey Keitel role, as a morally bankrupt law enforcer. The purists are raging and Ferrara is incensed. If ever a movie arrives hexed with dark voodoo, this movie is it.
And yet Herzog’s devil-may-care insouciance has paid off brilliantly. He does not retread Bad Lieutenant so much as reinvent it. Out goes Ferrara’s dark marinade of blood, semen and Catholic guilt. In comes an espresso of caffeine and amphetamines that, in its way, is just as effective. […Lees verder]

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Movie Night: Encounters at the End of the World (2007)

By: börek - August 1st, 2015  Filed under: Filmavond

End_of_the_worldSunday August 16th 2015, Movie Night: Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog, 2007, documentary, 99 minutes). Door opens at 8pm, film begin at 9pm. Free admission.

Read the title of “Encounters at the End of the World” carefully, for it has two meanings. As he journeys to the South Pole, which is as far as you can get from everywhere, Werner Herzog also journeys to the prospect of man’s oblivion. Far under the eternal ice, he visits a curious tunnel whose walls have been decorated by various mementos, including a frozen fish that is far away from its home waters. What might travelers from another planet think of these souvenirs, he wonders, if they visit long after all other signs of our civilization have vanished?

Herzog has come to live for a while at the McMurdo Research Station, the largest habitation on Antarctica. He was attracted by underwater films taken by his friend Henry Kaiser, which show scientists exploring the ocean floor. They open a hole in the ice with a blasting device, then plunge in, collecting specimens, taking films, nosing around. They investigate an undersea world of horrifying carnage, inhabited by creatures so ferocious, we are relieved they are too small to be seen. And also by enormous seals who sing to one another. In order not to limit their range, Herzog observes, the divers do not use a tether line, so they must trust themselves to find the hole in the ice again. I am afraid to even think about that. […Lees verder]

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