Vantage Point (2008) – Intriguing, though not entirely successful, political thriller about an assassination attempt against the President in Italy. The events are told from the POV of one character at a time (a reporter, a Secret Service agent, a tourist videotaping the President’s speech, an Italian police officer, etc…), then the film literally rewinds and shows the same events from another POV, going a little further chronologically… then rewind… then rewind…
I think the filmmakers got too caught up in the novelty of the format and left the human element behind — so much so that they had to shoehorn a “child in danger” into the climax for emotional impact. But definitely worth watching once.
Zotz! (1962) – Tom Poston (good golly, he was young once!) is a bachelor academic who, through contrived happenstance, acquires a magical medallion whose inscription only he can translate. The magic words therein lead to all sorts of wacky hijinx, including a (tastefully) naked lady who just happens to be a new academic in his department. So what does a patriotic young fellow do? He tries to give the secret to the military, of course!
Mildly amusing, but more interesting as an artifact nowadays. Casual sexism abounds, yes, but also casual patriotism — I can’t imagine someone from the left side of the spectrum watching this without screaming into a pillow.
My Best Fiend (1999) – Director Werner Herzog, who collaborated with noted enfant terrible Klaus Kinski on five films, recounts their love/hate relationship. Demonstrated:
- I’m not sure how good an actor Kinski truly was (it’s hard to evaluate performances in languages you don’t speak, after all), but he was a strikingly ugly man.
- By halfway through this documentary, I believed that Kinski was a truly loathsome human being. By the end, I had concluded that he’d never BECOME a human being; his was an arrested development, an emotional immaturity verging on a legitimate disability.
- Also Herzog ain’t no great example of sanity himself. Instead of the raging blusterfarg that Kinski could be, Herzog is the quiet, clinical madman who speaks with clipped sentences when mad. (Being German helps in that.) You can see that cold insanity on display when playing the heavy in Jack Reacher or “The Mandalorian”; that ain’t acting, folks.