werner-11 Reviews

Bang Boom Bang - Ein todsicheres Ding (1999)

one of the funniest films ever made!

[19 March 2001]

a really great movie, it should have been translated into English, it probably would have had a great success at the box office! or probably not, because it is rather one of those movies, you better watch at home with your buddies, with beer, coke, chips and perhaps some weed. sometimes Germans are able to make great movies - but only when they do their own stuff!

by the way, everybody has a favorite scene in that movie: mine is, when the garage-guy points at the line the safe made, from there where it was robbed to the garage! great characters! great movie! watch it!

WERNER

Life of Brian (1979)

best film of all time...

[10/10 · 10 January 2001]

I just want to tell my favorite scene: as brian wakes up, after the a "night" with judit, he opens up the window, and stands naked in the window, with spreaded arms, like jesus on the cross. then the people cheer for him, praising him as the messiah.

brain, sorry brian wants to get rid of those people, telling to them, that :"we are all individuals!", the mass repeating :"we are all individuals!", but only one throws in: "me not!" genious! watch it , enjoy and laugh!

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)

Nothing but a dream!

[10/10 · 20 March 2000]

There's nothing more to say about Jim Jarmusch's films, they are all excellent, and so it is with "Ghost dog". Did you understand this film? It took me some time to get along with it: Didn't you ever dream to be a real hero like superman when you were admiring him in cinema or on TV? Didn't you ever want to have his powers to defend yourself against the bad thugs in your school? A maverick guy - he's poor, fat, huge, ugly, black-ghetto-boy (we're no racists, it's just a symbol for a real outsider) - is lonely and living in a dove-s**t-area, hasn't a lot of friends and ain't loved by nobody. In the loneliness and emptiness of his life, he's reading "Hagekure - the way of the samurai". During the reading his childlike fantasy is mixing up the real outside world around him with the interior of the bookworld. So the most part of this film is nothing but a fantastic dream of a "little" boy. There are a lot of hints for that: one time he's killing somebody imaginary in a funny way like he has seen it in a cartoon (the often shown cartoons are a symbol for the childish thoughts inside this man), his sword-exercise which fits rather to Bruce Lee than to this clumsy guy. The weapons, he's using, are changed with those which he knows from the outside world, his log-cabin has a mechanic - fantastic weapon deposit like batman, and even his "car-opener" is James-Bondlike. How funny if you think about it! No this book is setting the story of his dream, but the content is influenced by the outside area, in which he's living in. For example: the italian mafia-clan stereotype who couldn't even pay the rent! Once he was punched in the ghetto, he wished to be saved but nobody came. Didn't you ever dream of not making that mistake you did long time ago? Or that some situations wold have ended in better way? Even when he reads about the glorious and honorful death of the samurai: once he is meeting two huntsmen who killed a "big fat black bear". Oh, just remember his own imaginary end when he's lying down in the same way, the black bear he is! Even his name is the name of the dog he knows from the street. The music sounds asian but is made by the afro-american "Wu-Tang-clan". The only reality is a boy and a book, a boy who's living inside himself and who is not communicating with anybody but a child, a book-reading girl and a foreign guy who he doesn't understand at all. Other people surely avoid meeting or talking with him. No, it's a sad and empty world we're living in, but Jim Jarmusch tells us to read books to let our fantasy rule and thus striking the emptiness!

My Name Is Nobody (1973)

Nobody was faster on the draw

[10/10 · 16 March 2000]

"Did you ever see anybody drawing faster than this man?" - "Faster than this man? Nobody!"

Great movie, great music, great actors: the Apotheosis of the western-movie genre! The film plays in the year 1899 - the turn of the century. This turn or "change" is the main theme of this movie. The good old times wonderfully embodied by Henry Fonda: The serious and lonesome gunslinger Jack Beauregard (has always a "beau regard") riding through the free west fighting for justice, a good man always giving a tip. But this man is getting older and slower too; and it's sure that one day he might get killed himself. But then suddenly some(no)body is coming: young, funny and very tricky (it's Terence Hill ,so that must be enough laudatio). He's a fresh breeze moving like a ghost (maybe he's one). Whereas Jack Beauregard used to solve his problems with his gun, Nobody is always sending up his opponents with an unbelievable easiness. Nobody is a fan of the "ancient" hero and wants to get him retired in style and set him a monument. In the end the old century, the old west and the old fashion of living, Jack Beauregard is leaving in the ship "sundowner" and the new era is born in the more and more crowded getting west. It's the change of a century the change of a generation. If you put this story in a relationship between a father and his son, you can say that this son - nobody - respects his father's - Jack Beauregard - time and doing. The other way round the father respects his own coming end (death) and his sons life, but not without giving him a tip: that he should always watch out if the barber is the really right barber! Every time I see the end teardrops are falling because now I know I'm young but soon I'm getting older and I have to die one day. I must admit that it's not easy to respect that! But Jack Beauregard is as well my hero and so I will respect my death too.

Werner

Watch Out, We're Mad (1974)

Il duo infernale

[10/10 · 16 March 2000]

Oh beloved earth-inhabitants: don't look for a meaning of your life (except 42) and don't look for a plot or a special camera-handling in this film, because there won't be any !!! No, you must see the Bud Spencer and Terence Hill movies in a different way, because it's nearly always the same concept, a concept which I personally like very much:

In the beginning of the story there are always those two guys - sometimes brothers or rivals - who don't estimate or even hate each other and who are often very poor. Terence Hill (Mario Girotti) is always the sporty-slander, blue-eyed and blond angel-type who is oozing a good feeling to his environment, whereas Bud Spencer (Carlo Pedersoli) symbolizes the grumpy, unshaved, fat and violent devil which nobody would like to come too close voluntarily. But the characters differ from their outward appearance: The "good" is underhanded and looks always for trouble which must be solved by the "bad" by the means of "little" slaps. Like every human they're searching for a great fortune to have a better life. During their adventures they have to face different , dangerous situations, where - though they don't like each other - nobody could stand without the other. On the surface there is always a harsh rejection, but inside of those two guys there is one big and important thing: love. They couldn't exist without each other. This might sound too much humanistic, but that's the way it is. The filmmakers might be no philosophers but instinctively they did something great: Because in the end they have often loads of money but not for long: au contraire they loose it immediately - easy come and easy go! But they do not only help each other, no often they help the poor and the weak. So isn't that fantastic, my friends. And there's still one thing about these films: it's humor. There are different kinds of humors around the world (e.g. asian and british ( so that might be the reason why the comment of the english friend was so negative) and don't forget the translation problem!). In german the humor of the duo infernale films is great, it should be even better than in the original italian language, as my buddy Andreas Kropp, who is half german half italian, told me.

Don't expect cineastic masterpieces, but lean back and enjoy the films of with Bud Spencer and Terence Hill!

Stranger Than Paradise (1984)

The emptiness of life

[10/10 · 4 February 2000]

A lot of people believe in god, some believe in elvis , some believe in something different. Some people, like Jim Jarmusch, don't believe in anything. So he brought his nihilistic point of view into his film "Stranger Than Paradies". This film shows the human - being as a meaningless existence in an empty world which is a little bit "Stanger than paradies"!!! The emptiness in this world and so in these young humans life is demonstrated in several parts of the film: The streets of this world are empty - all the others are not useful, 'cause they don't know'em anyway, so Jim left them out; the life of the people, like Willie, is empty: he's sitting the whole day-time in his dirty room watching TV, betting on horses. The real life takes place on the movie or the TV - screen! Watch it! v How boring this life you think? You are not living like that! Repent yourself! I guess nearly all the people live somehow like that. But Willie is getting a chance: his cousin is coming from the poorer hungary longing for a "new better life" in the land of the 1000 opporunities; she`s disturbing "willie's whole life". Every scene makes us expecting that something is happening, that there is something, "the something special" we're all looking for in our live. but then the scenes end, and nothing has happened. Anything really special happened in your life so far? What are you still expecting? Want loads of money? So do the young guys: They get money! Now they expect something great: Florida - sunshine. But when they get there there's nothing different to NY. They don't know what to do in there lifes! Even when they lose their money and get a new chance by the black "deus ex macchina". No life is absurd - it's empty and meaningless! This world is, aswell as I think, godless, comunicationless and stranger than paradies. An excellent movie So Mr. Jarmusch, if you liked my comment, give me a role in one of your next films, then my life would eb better!!! Thanks a lot!

WERNER

Brazil (1985)

Brazil - What else?

[10/10 · 16 December 1999]

Did you ever ask yourself why the film is called "Brazil". I'll give you an answer which could be right. Brazil is the song named which Sam Lowry is listening to when he is driving away from his "metropolis" into the more rural area. For me Brazil is synonymous with perhaps "freedom", "longing" or "desire". Though Sam is living in a system (just a symbol for a system)in which he was born (he couldn't do anything against it just like you and me) he doesn't like it, it's boring. The people there, they just live like everyday's people, working for this meaningless system which is so absurdly drawn. Their living is meaningless. Nobody really likes to be there because the system is so unreal and very misanthropic. Everybody is "arrested" in this system. People don't really live in this system, they rather vegetate. No, Sam Lowry wants to get out of this system - even of his reality. The opposite of reality for me is s.th like a dream. Mr. Lowry too, he is dreaming, dreaming to be free, free as bird. In his dreams he's flying like a big bird. It's a human with wings, a human who's flying? Here his impossible longings are shown. Even in his body he's arrested, another kind of a system. He's no bird, he's a mere human, who doesn't want to be one. No, he wants to be free as a flying bird, he wants true feelings, he wants love (the scene when the woman in his dreams calls him, he wants to get to his true love, but then the gigantic walls of the system appear( human made, no natural obstacles )and so he can't do what he wants to do) His only solution is to get out of this systematic world. Every time when these things happen, when he has surrealistic dreams of love and freedom, when he's getting away from the cold system of reality, the song or the theme "Brazil" is heard.

As well in the very end of the film, when he gets away from his tormentors ("We've lost him"), he is getting out of another system - the system of being alive. Again the Brazil - theme shows its meaning, it's Sam Lowry's hymn - of getting away from everything what restricts him. What name would you have given to the film?

Werner Keller ( My grand-father has stolen a dutch bike )