Change Your Image
VolcanoVaporizer
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Cobra Verde (1987)
Mondo Kinski
The 5th and last Herzog-Kinski movie, "Aguirre" and "Fitzcarraldo" also had a colonial-era background though this time the focus is on Africa instead of South America.
Contains some disturbing imagery, reminiscent of Mondo style movies and seemingly referencing "El Topo".
Must-see for Kinski fans but too far-out for wider audiences in comparison to the other Kinski-Herzog movies.
Freud (2020)
First Austrian Netflix Show
Very explicit when it comes to nudity and violence, it does not disappoint if you come to Freud for his famous sexual theses. This is NOT a documentary about historical events though.
The real star in the show is Freud's associate, the man-of-the-people policeman: Netflix did a great job with the casting of underground actor Georg Friedrich known for his work with Ulrich Seidl and Michael Glawogger. I also liked to see comedian Angelika Niedetzky among other actors only known to Austrian audiences.
The autentic "Heuriger" music parts and Viennese dialogue as well as the set design did an outstanding job to capture what Freud-era Vienna might have been like.
The last episodes however could have been a little bit more climactic.
Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood (2019)
Revisionist history with great technical value
It's a Western where Hippies are the bad guys.
Technically very well made, very good cars, sets and costumes, a great reconstruction of the era, expect for the revisionist Manson storyline which seems like the wet dream of a trope-like 60s conservative man who hates evil dirty hippies. Is it a satire?
The historical subject matter around the murders and the family is only explored extremely superficially and underplayed. It seems like most of the interesting parts about the family were cut out in favor of boring Western film set dialogue.
The scenes with the Manson girls, hitchhiking and roaming around the city collecting food and also all scenes with Margot Robbie are tough brilliantly acted and the highlight of the film.
Lots of time-period film references, weird how Dragnet "the Blue Boy" episode wasn't featured.
Really cool to see Bruce Dern, one of the typical B-movie biker gang movie actors.
What ultimately ruins the film for me:
The scene discrediting a martial-arts hero is stupid and unhonourable !
Game Over, Man! (2018)
Deserves to be called an Indie Cult Classic
*************************************
The Alternate Title for this Review is: Three Stoners Make A Hollywood Movie *************************************
The three stoners from "Workaholics" get the money to make a Hollywood movie and they deliver a film that constantly surprises and essentialy never turns boring.
If you've ever smoked Salvia Divinorum before, you'll like it.
Enemy (2013)
Depressing Hipster Pretentiousness
This film is boring as hell. Nothing happens until the last couple of minutes. There is no meaningful message.
It basically feels like a 90 minute commercial for Jake Gyllenhall. He lays the women, he's a depressed intellectual, he drives a motorcycle.
Visually, the film is covered in a cheap-looking After Effects style Sepia Layer that makes every frame feel the same.
There are some very short "dream" sequences however that feature mediocre animations.
Comparing this to Lynch as other reviewers here do is insanity. This film is boring and uninspired, trying to hard to be intellectual while just playing with clichés seen hundred times before. For a good hipsteresque "intellectual" movie that also basically revolves around mental problems , check out "Synechdoche New York".
Black Angels (1970)
Satisfactory bikerploitation trash from the 70s
Judging this from the German dubbing "Black Angels - die sich selbst zerfleischen", I have to say the dialogue in this one is funny as hell, just as in almost every other 60/70s biker movie.
This one features a black biker gang (the Choppers) that lives in harmony with a white biker gang... until circumstances are stirring both gangs up against each other.
The film contains bike rides, weird side characters, surprisingly not-that-cool music and a really funny bar brawl scene that features funky 60s posters (Weedies, Speed Kills, Hendrix), including a huge poster of Fonda in "Easy Rider", a nice meta-joke. There are even real-life wildcats in this one. Also, a character wears an outrageous Shakespearian shirt and urinates on another character while sittin on a tree.
But... The potential of the Blaxploitation-like title is never really "exploited", the film even revolves a lot more about the white gang (the Satan's Serpents) and there is a sad lack of cool black bikers riding bikes. The topic of racism is introduced as a minor character who plays a significant role in the movie's illogical conclusion. An ending that nevertheless features a satisfying final battle.
Still definitely one of the better biker movies if only for the trash-nostalgia.
Kuma (2012)
Powerful acting performance in a study of a "traditional" Turkish family
Kuma is a film that a conservative Turkish person might be very disturbed about, should they go into it expecting a happy Turkish family movie. Which is rather unlikely, as "Kuma" translates to "Second Wife".
I won't go into details here but essentially this movie is a study on "fanatically traditional" Turkish family issues dealing with patriarchy, women's rights, sexuality, ... A critique if you will but a subtle one, grounded in authenticity as the director Umut Dağ probably draws from experiences within his own expanded family, and nuanced enough to still make the viewer see the characters as human beings after all. It is a deconstruction of the "bad Turkish immigrant" stereotype as well in that regard.
What's really outstanding in this movie is the acting. Absolutely perfect cast with beautiful but fragile Begüm Akkaya as the title role Ayse.
There's also Vedat Erincin from "Almanya - Willkommen in Deutschland" who played a completely different father figure role in that movie. Also, some people will remember the kid actor as the little boy from the "Tatort: Angezählt" episode where he rode a bike, sprayed a prostitute with gasoline and burned her. Muratahn Muslu also was in that episode and played a boxing pimp. Muslu transitions to a very different take on masculinity in "Kuma", once again proving that he is a great versatile actor.
On a side note, the movie reminded my in a weird way of "Das weisse Band". It was also very likely inspired by the "Kuma" film from 1974.
All in all a must-see if you are even vaguely interested in the issues surrounding "traditional" Turkish families.
Planet Ottakring (2015)
A light-hearted portrayal of a Vienna neighbourhood
If you've ever been to Ottakring you'll recognize a lot of the locations and probably even some of the characters.
The cast features a wide array of people one might encounter when walking through the real Brunnenmarkt area but doesn't take itself too seriously, all in all I find it a very authentic and at the same time self ironic portrayal of a Viennese district. Great dialogue in original accent, very funny and great cameos! A really cool Austrian comedy movie, the only drawback being it may be a bit harder to enjoy if one is not familiar with the place Ottakring.