Tuesday Movie Review

Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call - New Orleans
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Xzibit
Directed by Werner Herzog

Nicolas Cage is a fine actor. I like him in just about everything he does because you can see he fully commits to his character. People often find that the result turns out "weird" or "over-the-top". I disagree, mostly. Unfortunately, when he is given terrible writing, as in this film, his performance does seem highly exaggerated. This movie is a "re-telling" of a film from 1992 starring Harvey Keitel. In that movie, Keitel was so over-the-top that it ruined the interesting set up. Werner Herzog has seemingly not learned anything from that. All of the characters, except the one played by Xzibit, are so unbelievably corny and high strung that one can't ignore it. It takes everything out of a film that, in the hands of another director, could have been worthwhile viewing. I've never seen a Werner Herzog film that wasn't a documentary, but people tell me he's a genius. I didn't see it with this film. He would hold shots way too long, especially when it came to iguanas(!), and it took all the pacing out of the scene. Cage, although very interesting in his physicality, just went a little overboard for my taste. Critics raved about the film, for the most part, but I just don't see the value in it.

GRADE: D

The Wave (Die Welle)
Starring: Jurgen Vogel, Frederick Lau, Max Riemelt, Jennifer Ulrich
Directed by Dennis Gansel

This film from Germany is a fictionalized account of actual events in a California high school way back in 1967. The students are in a class that teaches them about an autocratic society. What better place to discuss this than Germany?!? The teacher, played admirably by Vogel, is very popular in the school and his class fills up quite quickly. His unconventional way of teaching the kids the downfalls of an autocratic society begin to backfire when the kids involved seem to think it's cool. Everybody dresses the same, they're all for one cause, nobody judges anybody else. They're having fun with it...but too much fun. The story leads directly to a predictable conclusion that you can see coming from the first fifteen minutes, but it's quite a ride getting there. Every kid, and I mean EVERY kid, is totally believable. These were kids I went to high school with...exploring sex, drugs, alcohol, rebellion. Although the story is somewhat simplistic, the viewer is never cheated out of what's going on in their lives. Good viewing that makes me want to learn more about the actual experiment.

GRADE: B