Eyeblood

That's right. I was going to give this lame excuse for a film a 3, but I had pity on it, seeing that one night in Vienna, I was bored to death and it happened to be on TV. If not for successfully wasting my time without me noticing, it would be a three...however it is a 4.

I don't want to sound harsh, but this movie bored my coke flat and my popcorn stale. It bored me so bad that I had a fight with my girlfriend about emotions. There is only one reason to rewatch this movie. I want to do a scientific study of how many times one of the characters cried, or almost cried. Now don't get me wrong, like my girlfriend did, emotions are necessary for a movie to be good. I can't stand movies, and it seems to be either the French, if subtitles can be emotional, or Hollywood that make these movies, that are obviously trying to suck me in by squirting tears in my eye. The whole movie was a magnanimous fairy tale. I would have called it, "Trouble in Never-neverland." Everyone lived in a beautiful house, with beautiful things, with lots of money, being beautiful themselves, having cute kids, having cool jobs, and even the damned dog was cute. Blah!! If someone in Hollywood is listening, drop the budgets and raise the quality. It's a good thing movies have a loud song during the ending credits to wake people up.

Look to the horizon. It is void of RIDERS.

this is a film i forced myself to watch in order to complete a speech in german about wim wender's amerkiabild. it is all about the death of a cancer ridden man. that is about all of the plot i could figure out.

the images, as is usual with wender's films, are striking and pungent to the hollywood-movie-goer senses. the scenes in this movie are about the slowest i have ever seen. i did find a few rewarding scenes here and there scattered throughout the chaos. the graduate monkey, the speech at vassar college, and the alarm clock scene to mention a few.

that is about all i know on this one.

i give it two riders of the apocalypse.

One things i have noticed about herr wender's films is that, and i believe i have read something to this effect as well in a book, his films are not a story requiring visual images, but images composing a story. this film was mostly visual; the plot falls overboard somewhere, and really i didn't miss it.

the train scene, with the murders, delighted me. anyone who has ever traveled on a european train knows how hard it would be to pull off the murder and dumping of two bodies.

this is not an action film. the only real tension i felt as i sat through the film was between the farmer and his wife. he is killing people to help his family, but in the process destroying the marriage. to save it economically he is destroying trust, love and simplicity.

it deserves three riders of the apocalypse.

pay attention to the sounds in this film. philip cannot stand the sound of america--the tv, the radio, the noise of the city. upon arrival in europe he falls asleep to the soothing noise of classical music.

my favorite statement, which i take to be about the age old notion of "paradis amerika," is when alice and philip play hangman in the plane. The word used is traum. alice says only things that really exist can be used as words for this game. paradis amerika cannot kill you, because it doesn't exist.

a wonderful film.

i give it three riders of the apocalypse.