Another interesting documentary by Werner Herzog. It’s basically the story of a dude named Graham Dorrington, an aeronautical engineer that built a teardrop-shaped airship and wants to fly it over the forest canopies of Guyana. There are some good segments about Kaieteur Falls, in Guyana, where supposedly nobody knows what is behind the waterfall because nobody has explored it, and legend among the natives is that it is full of treasure. Werner Herzog had a cameraman drop down to film behind the falls, but their footage won’t be shown.

One of the most interesting people in the film is local miner named Marc Anthony Yhap, who is searching for his family that migrated to Spain. Marc Anthony seems like an awesome person, I hope he has found his family.

Even Dwarfs Started Small is possibly the strangest and most frightening movie in the history of forever. I interpreted the 1970 film as being about a village full of of deranged, hoodlum German midgets. It reminds me of a nightmare. Not for the faint of heart, yet oddly humorous? The star of the film was undoubtedly Helmut Döring, a dwarf who is literally only like 2’5″ tall or something like that.

However, I couldn’t stop watching. The movie is another weird story from the mind of Werner Herzog. The movie is in German language with English subtitles. I think the midgets were actually being held in an institution that is ran by dwarfs, and captive dwarfs go on a rebellion causing pure havoc inside and outside. They even kill a pig that has nursing babies. Warning: They really kill a damn pig.

The dwarfs seek to destroy anything that has beauty. They “water” flowers in pots with gasoline, and light them on fire. They break windows and do various other things much weirder.

After you watch the movie (I should say *If* you watch the movie), I recommend watching the feature length commentary as well, and let Werner Herzog explain the film in his own words.

 

Man, Werner Herzog is so awesome. I’ve said it before, but the guy is a film genius. Whether he is doing feature films or documentaries, pretty much everything I’ve seen of his has been brilliant. I admit, I only learned of Herzog a few years ago, and still have some catching up to do on his films, but I went through and added everything I haven’t seen to my Netflix queue.

In this documentary, Encounters At The End Of The World, he travels to the South Pole and does a film not about penguins (as he tells you at the beginning) but about the people who live and work at the South Pole, and the land itself. He asks oddball questions and makes the mundane seem interesting. The guy just has a way of talking and using words that make you want to keep watching. The cinematography is amazing also (done mostly by Peter Zeitlinger), taking you to places most of us will never get to see, under the ice and above the ice.

See also my previous blog post: Mister Lonely

Ok, maybe not the best movie ever, but Mister Lonely is possibly the best movie ever, if I were to watch it again on massive amounts of mind-altering drugs. As it stands right now, I have no idea what the movie is about, or what the hell I just watched. I just know it was awesome. For starters, I knew the movie would be odd as soon as I saw that it was written by Harmony Korine, the same dude who wrote a couple of weird and disturbing films that I liked called Kids, and the even stranger Gummo. So that is basically why I chose to add the movie to my queue.

Before you rent this movie for yourself, let me say it again, it’s weird. As I said earlier, I have no idea what the hell I just watched, except that in one scene I remember an old dude gently tapping a hammer on his head. The movie is supposedly about a commune in Paris full of celebrity impersonators that include a foul-mouthed Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe (who is married to Charlie Chaplin, and their daughter is Shirley Temple). Oh and there is also a Buckwheat impersonator kid who rides a pony and has a strange obsession with chicken. There is also a Pope impersonator living at the commune, he says in one scene that “These lambs are not from outer space.” I’ll let you interpret that however you want.

Oh and there are also flying nuns. Literally, flying nuns. They also play imaginary volleyball in one scene. The nuns, that is. Also, legendary film genius Werner Herzog is in the movie as a priest. As always, he is brilliant. I will generally watch anything associated with Werner Herzog.

The New York Times A.O. Scott said “Nearly every frame is an image of arresting beauty.”
Filmmaker Magazine’s Michael Tully said “Dazzling…A remarkable achievement.”

I say: What a weird-ass movie.