Rating: 
Summary: Mike Myers' "Dieter" Would Love This
Review: The adjectives "creepy" and "mordant" are usually not used in praise of something, but those are the terms I use to praise Werner Herzog's mesmerizing film "Woyzeck." Herzog regular Klaus Kinski stars in the title role and his first appearance, in the opening credits, is worth the price of the video. A hair-raising tune is played by a string group as the soldier Woyzeck is drilled and brutalized by a shadowy figure in jackboots. He spends the film being degraded by his cynical superior officer and experimented on by a sadistic doctor. His sexy wife (Eva Mates, winner of the best actress award at Cannes) is sleeping with a drum-major. Woyzeck succumbs to the voices in his head and in one of the most horrific murder scenes ever filmed, takes action. The story has been around for 175 years and obviously speaks deeply to Germans, who have had plenty of historical experience with sadism and domination (the doctor is eerily prescient of Nazi atrocities.) This film is not as totally satisfying as "Aguirre" or "Nosferatu" but has moments of twisted genius all its own. Herzog is a unique director who makes demented, entertaining epics that can go way over the top (the closest American equivalent is Francis Ford Coppola in his "Apocalypse Now" phase.) Oddly moving, even darkly funny, this must be one of the favorite movies of Mike Myers' "Dieter" character from "Saturday Night Live". Watch it on Halloween, if you are in the right mood.
Rating:
Summary: Mike Myers' "Dieter" Would Love This
Review: The adjectives "creepy" and "mordant" are usually not used in praise of something, but those are the terms I use to praise Werner Herzog's mesmerizing film "Woyzeck." Herzog regular Klaus Kinski stars in the title role and his first appearance, in the opening credits, is worth the price of the video. A hair-raising tune is played by a string group as the soldier Woyzeck is drilled and brutalized by a shadowy figure in jackboots. He spends the film being degraded by his cynical superior officer and experimented on by a sadistic doctor. His sexy wife (Eva Mates, winner of the best actress award at Cannes) is sleeping with a drum-major. Woyzeck succumbs to the voices in his head and in one of the most horrific murder scenes ever filmed, takes action. The story has been around for 175 years and obviously speaks deeply to Germans, who have had plenty of historical experience with sadism and domination (the doctor is eerily prescient of Nazi atrocities.) This film is not as totally satisfying as "Aguirre" or "Nosferatu" but has moments of twisted genius all its own. Herzog is a unique director who makes demented, entertaining epics that can go way over the top (the closest American equivalent is Francis Ford Coppola in his "Apocalypse Now" phase.) Oddly moving, even darkly funny, this must be one of the favorite movies of Mike Myers' "Dieter" character from "Saturday Night Live". Watch it on Halloween, if you are in the right mood.
Rating: 
Summary: BORN TO LOSE
Review: We have to thank Anchor Bay for bringing into the DVD standard a certain number of german director Werner Herzog movies. Werner Herzog is, in my opinion, one of the best film directors of Movie History and his films must be shown again and again if we want that a new generation of directors rises from the ashes of the kilometers of rotten anonymous pellicle produced in industrial quantity nowadays. WOYZECK was filmed in 1978 in Czeschoslovaquia, just after the completion of NOSFERATU. Georg Büchner's play is well-known to european literature students who have to read it at least once during their academic career. At first, I didn't understand why WOYZECK had attracted a lyrical director like Werner Herzog. Georg Büchner's minimalist dialogs and action don't leave much place for the visionary travellings of the director of AGUIRRE and KASPAR HAUSER. But, as soon as Klaus Kinski appears as the soldier Woyzeck, I knew that something would happen on the screen, Klaus Kinski IS Woyzeck in the same way that he WAS Aguirre, the mad conquistador. When Woyzeck feels that there is " a second nature " hidden behind what we see, the genius of Werner Herzog explodes once again : what is important is not what we see but what we feel while being hypnotized by the hallucinated Klaus-Woyzeck-Kinski. Of course, I shall recommend WOYZECK to those of you who are already familiar with Werner Herzog's world through AGUIRRE, KASPAR HAUSER or HEART OF GLASS. I also recommend it to the students who are fighting with the dryness of Georg Büchner's play or to those who still believe that Klaus Kinski was only a B-movie actor who starred in horror movies and spaghetti westerns of the 60's and the 70's. Superb copy with a trailer and incomplete filmographies of Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski. A DVD zone movie lovers only.
Rating: 
Summary: Woyzeck--An awkward film
Review: Woyzeck took 18 days to film and four days to edit, but Herzog claims that this was perfect. The film presents different interesting philosophical and pseudo-scientific notions through the main character Woyzeck (Klaus Kinski) and his 18th century town. Kinski portrays Woyzeck with an outstanding performance, but the whole cinematic experience seems mechanically absurd and awkward. However, after viewing many other Herzog films, he remains one of the leading directors in German cinema.
Rating:
Summary: Woyzeck--An awkward film
Review: Woyzeck took 18 days to film and four days to edit, but Herzog claims that this was perfect. The film presents different interesting philosophical and pseudo-scientific notions through the main character Woyzeck (Klaus Kinski) and his 18th century town. Kinski portrays Woyzeck with an outstanding performance, but the whole cinematic experience seems mechanically absurd and awkward. However, after viewing many other Herzog films, he remains one of the leading directors in German cinema.
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