Directors: Werner Herzog

I bought this movie before I watched it on impulse. It's about what I beleive is an insane asylumn completely populated by dwarves who, lock up the guards and run amok. They light things on fire, they cannot properly operate large machinery, they coc...(read more)k fight, and demand freedom, and then run around some more. Rebellion has never looked so ridiculous as it does here. Amongst the small group of those who like Werner Herzog films there is an even smaller group who like this film. It's a very long, very tasteless joke, with a great punchline, but it's almost worth it just to watch the finally freed warden and voice of reason for the majority in the film, suddenly begin to argue with a tree, and win!

Hypnotized actors, in this story of how something as fragile as glass can bring on the apocalypse for a small German community. There's a character who predicts the future, and narrates in some of Herzog's most poetic dialog yet. The scenes at the end overlooking the cliffs above the Atlantic and their dream of "worlds to come", keep this from being your usual end of all things story. For Herzog there aren't ends, just junctures where one thing dies and another begins. Cycles in history (reflected in the mysterious prophets discussion of greater apocalypses to come in the future world wars 1 and 2).

The man who can see the future (and who is of course blamed for all the towns ills), at one point wishes he was out of his cell, and in the next scene he's walking in the woods talking to himself, giving the film a strange tinge of magic realism(though realism and this film don't exactly mix). Strange, difficult, but unforgettable, and a must for Herzog fans. (also it's where the Blondie song comes from)

It's taken me awhile to feel like I "get" Werner Herzog movies, I often find myself arguing with myself during his stuff. Half the time is, what a pretentious hack God when will this s**t be over, the other half is my God that's beautiful, he really is a mad genius...and by the end I usually don't know what to think.

I've never watched a movie by Herzog where the plot really amounted to much, the scenarios are set up, and they follow their natural courses, but it's the moments along the way, the journey itself, and not the prize at the end, that makes his film's worth watching.

Herzog makes images, often of people being surrounded and enveloped by nature and the world around them, but images I can safely say I'd never seen before anywhere.

Whether photographing a beach, a horde of plague rats, or a man wandering through mountains, there's a photorealism and dreaminess to everything that goes hand in hand, and that it's that kind of paradox that seems at the heart of Herzog, if it sounds like too much or not enough, just get out now.

Nosferatu is the Dracula story most people are familiar with, no Romance here though, just craven greed and lust. But the directors skills transform it into something else...However I would be lying if I said I knew what, because it's not really the point, were given the images and the framework of the story and either we find something beautiful or true or we don't.

I paused this movie quite a few times just to look at it, and that's the best endorsement I can give to this, and a lot of the Herzog stuff that I end up liking(Aguire:The Wrath Of God, Heart Of Glass, Even Dwarfs Started Small, Strosvek, etc). Beautiful, unique, and challenging, but not for everyone.

Took me four different sittings to get through this movie all the way, and it's only an hour and 40 minutes. A tragedy from the word go, we watch Aguirre a Spanish conquistador, stage a mutiny, and attempt to lead his men to The Lost City Of Gold (which as explained in the films opening text, was invented by the Indians to trick the greedy invaders). So while the audience watches a slow boat to nowhere, the captain and crew become more and more obsessed and assured of their quest to become like God Kings of the New World.

Why this movie is worth seeing is for it's photography, the Amazon looks real in this film in all it's inhospitable glory, the films only music comes from native flute, and thought the characters are Spanish, they all speak German, ha! I'm not sure if I'm sold on this being in the top ten greatest films of all time list (which it is by many), but I can see how it adds and deepens the Herzog mystique. Grueling, but rewarding watch for cinephiles

One of Herzog's more accessible films, about the American dream not quite being what it's cracked up to be. An ex con, a prostitute, and an old man make their way from the crime and hopelessness of their lives in Berlin, for greater problems and ultimate destruction in America. More than just being a criticism of America, I think the film points out how tragedy, despair, and absurdity, are not located in any one country, they are everywhere, and even if they weren't we would carry them with us. The immigrant story is one of escape, and for Herzog and Stroszek there is no escape, no matter amusing trying on different roles and locations might be. In the end were all a dancing chickens, bass playing ducks, rabbits riding fire trucks, and broken ski lifts going in endless circles, and that's Herzog's imagery from the films final moments, not mine

Herzog as artist and writer, suceeds in making one of the most interesting and bizzare sci-fi mockumentaries ever made, Herzog the director is just a bit out of step though. Like Criag Baldwin's films, Herzog's "Wild Blue Yonder" mixes documentary ar...(read more) chival footage, with a fictional narrative, and a few "new" scenes, about the secret history of a group of Aliens from an aquatic world called "The Wild Blue Yonder".

The aliens come to earth, with hopes of building great cities, and a large shopping mall...but as narrator "Brad Dourif" says "we sucked...that's right aliens suck!". No one shows up to the shopping malls a ruined American town, acts as stand in for the lost hopes and dreams of the aliens, some of whom take jobs at NASA in secret. Then when a space program is created with the intention of humans going to the aliens homeworld...well unfortunately that's when things, slow, way, way down.

Before this point in the movie theres a good rythmic balance between narration and found footage, that keeps the film lively, about as soon as Dourif is no longer the center of the story, Herzog relies far too heavily on his found footage. Nasa astornaugts float in space(though beatiful too long, and when they arrive Yonder, we see more stunning underwater cinematography that does look like a truly alien world, but again, it just goes on just too long.
An ambitious and at times fascinating film, where Herzog the writer beats out Herzog the director, it's usually the other way around.

"Have you any idea how vast the distance between stars is?", Dourif, the sucky alien asks, annoyed and frustrated, after going over Herzog's pet peeves like white mountain climbers stealing the dignity of the mountains and the domestication of pigs as the worst move in human history, and until this film, no I don't think I fully comprehended the vastness of the world. Which is a Herzog idea that comes up again and again, little people, big world, and its only those crazy obsessive driven individuals who can make dents in it, or at least the most interesting dents.