A German born American Navy pilot (Christian Bale), who has dreamed of nothing but flying since witnessing the Allied bombings of his hometown as a child, is shot down during a secret bombing mission in Laos, captured, and immediately plots an escape plan with his sickly fellow inmates. After profiling Dengler's remarkable exploits in Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Werner Herzog dramatized his story in this effective, offbeat POW tale that starts to drag in the last act with an out of place ending. Bale's aloof performance is likable and Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies are strong in support.

*** out of ****

A documentary on the world wide web, touching on but not limited to its founding, current lifestyles, addictions, bullying, radiation, artificial intelligence, space travel, self-cognizance, and the future. Werner Herzog's Lo and Behold contains some interesting tidbits but is way too disjointed and abstract and it left me saying something I almost never say in that this probably would have worked a whole lot better in an expanded form. Also, as much of a benefit as Herzog himself has been to his nonfiction features, his interviews often seem stagey and fake which is definately the case here.

** out of ****

In 2003, after 13 summers spent living in the Grizzly Maze at Katmai National Park, Alaska, an endeavor that gained his national recognition, nature enthusiast and filmmaker Timothy Treadwell, along with his then girlfriend, were mauled and consumed by one of his beloved bears. Extensive, composed largely from hundreds of hours of Treadwell's footage, Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man is a fascinating character study of a troubled individual that makes suggestions and even leaps about his motives. The director's narration is alternately helpful and unnecessary, the same to be said for what appear to be staged interviews, though the project achieves a quality that can only be called Herzogian.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Werner Herzog documents the annual Buddhist pilgrimage of thousands to Bhod Gaya, India, a place  where the Buddha is thought to have earned enlightenment, and where the Dalai Llama addresses the faithful and symbolically distributes the minutely constructed colored sand object of the title to the wind. Herzog does an excellent jobs documenting the voyage but things really start to drag after the destination is reached. Also, an interview between the filmmaker and the Llama seems really poorly thought out and only adds the tedium of the concluding half of the documentary.

*** out of ****

Just as he has been drawn to epic, quixotic projects, in his extended career Werner Herzog has also favored short form storytelling, the results of which have been no less outlandishly idiosyncratic. Here is a random sampling of these films, all of which can be found readily online or as part of DVD extras:

Precautions Against Fanatics, 1969

One of Herzog's first film attempts is a very short (and very unfunny) look at people involved in horse training.

**

The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, 1974

Presents the story of a ski jumper who was so veritable that he began to flagrantly and dangerously overshoot the course. Plays like an episode Wide World of Sports, but not without great footage and central Herzogian themes.

***

Ballad of the Little Soldier, 1984

Intriguing footage of child soldiers from an impoverished Nicuraguan village preparing for combat against the Sandinistas.

*** 1/2

The Dark Glow of the Mountains, 1985

The director and his German speaking subjects are disappointingly dubbed over by an American narrator in this no less compelling documentary of a pair of mountain climbers who discuss their trade and the perils involved.

***

Werner Herzog looks back on his temptestuous friendship and professional relationship with Klaus Kinski, the maniacal actor with whom the director shared a boarding house as a youth and went on to star in some of his best work (Aguirre the Wrath of God, Nosferatu, Fitzcarraldo), while recounting having to weather (and often encouraging) Kinski's fierce tirades and abuses before his premature death in 1991. My Best Fiend is the kind of documentary that probably sounded better in its initial conception rather than its end result. Though containing some hysterical and outrageous stories and footage, where Herzog's megalomania is just as much on display as Kinski's, this is the kind of work that plays better as part of movie lore than as a documented record.

** 1/2 out of ****

This remake of Murnau's 1922 silent Bram Stoker adaptation tells the familiar, traditional Dracula story, while getting off to a surprisingly conventional start for a Werner Herzog flick before inevitably arriving at the jarring, unforgettable imagery. The film is stark, eerie, though not without a sense of humor and features a perfectly emotive, extraordinarily creepy (and surprisingly subdued) Klaus Kinski in the title role. Bruno Ganz is strong as the anemic Harker and Isabelle Adjani makes for a strong heroine, portraying Ganz's wife and Kinski's would be prey.

*** 1/2 out of ****

A geologist is sent to survey a desert area in hopes of finding uranium deposits but finds his work disrupted by the aboriginal people who find even his testing procedures to be a violation of their spiritual practices. After the mining corporation's attempts to buy them off fail, the matter ends up in the hands of the local courts. Where the Green Ants Dream is peculiar and offbeat, which is expected for a movie by Werner Herzog, but lacks the mystery that surrounds his great works. It also feels cheaply made, not well thought out, hurt by an absence of a musical score, and marred by a pronounced politically correct stance.

** out of ****

An entrepreneur (Klaus Kinski) with wild dreams of bringing opera to the jungle, searches the Andes for already depleted supplies of rubber during the early 20th Century boom. When it is reported that untapped acres of the plant exist on an navigable river, a river which is separated from the main waterway by only a few hundred meters at one point, the off-kiltered businessman hires scores of natives, devises a lever and pulley system, and determines to pull his ship over hill from one stream to the other. Notoriously filmed on location and unsimulated, Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo is a mesmerizing and arresting vision of madness with wide-eyed Kinski in one of his best collaborations with the director.

**** out of ****

A low level German soldier (Klaus Kinski) begins to lose his grip on reality after subjecting himself to bizarre scientific experiments, and flies off the handle after learning his sweetheart (Eva Mattes) has taken another lover. Shot jut a week after filming wrapped on Nosferatu, and on the same locations with the same crew in just over half a month's time, Woyzeck feels rushed and a little stagy but is worth seeing for another crazed Kinski performance and a haunting, gracefully shot killing sequence towards the conclusion.

*** out of ****

While an overseer sitting high above the clouds looks down and casts judgement, the townspeople in a preindustrial alpine village struggle to recreate a secret glass formula which the head glassmaker has just taken to his grave. Heart of Glass is one of Werner Herzog's stranger experiments: obtuse, without narrative, and reportedly shot with the entire cast under hypnosis, which affects the film with a hazy, somnolent quality. Still, it contains the essence of the iconoclastic director's great work such as its saturated cinematography and the unforgettable moments, notably the glass blowing sequences, the biblical narration over the nature segments, and a murderer dancing with his victim.

*** out of ****

A look into the life of Fini Straubinger, an elderly deaf and blind woman who dedicated her life to advocating for those met with similar conditions. Werner Herzog's Land of Silence and Darkness is a captivating documentary with educational value that bears great camera footage that lengthily, and with what seems to be immense fascination on the behalf of its director, tracks the, at often times, enchanting behavior of its subjects.

*** 1/2 out of ****

The story of Dieter Dengler, a German born Navy pilot who was shot down by the Viet Cong, captured, tortured, and made a daring, grueling escape. In Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Werner Herzog documents a remarkable man who relays his harrowing story, part of the time in amazing, vivid recreations that are hard hitting and take on bizarre Herzogian elements. With an eccentric, venturesome countryman it is clear to see why the director was drawn to this material (he would tell the story again with Christian Bale in Rescue Dawn) and it is further evident that he would do whatever it takes to avoid cliched, staid filmmaking, a trapping this wonderful doc could easily have fallen into.

In 1971, Werner Herzog sought out to make a science fiction film in the Sahara Desert which was later abandoned but resulting in a landscape documentary of the unforgiving, arid region known as Fata Morgana. Twenty Years later the maverick director visited the combustible fields of post Gulf War Kuwait for another similarly haunting apocalyptic documentation. Herzog has spoken of the cinema being devoid of memorable images and his films are known for being comprised of a bizarre array of them, but here these two similar documentaries contain only images and are devoid of narrative and anything else resembling traditional storytelling. Still, both are beautifully shot and even poetic, and, like many of his films, have a certain evocative, ethereal quality.

A group of mentally disturbed halflings take control of their rural institution, detaining the headmaster while performing a series of abnormal and destructive rituals. Even Dwarfs Started Small, an early entry from Werner Herzog, is an incredble blend of bizarre imagery and visionary staging, which also is virtually plotless, existing almost solely as weirdness for weirdness' sake.

*** out of ****

An alcoholic, mildly retarded street performer and recent parolee (Bruno S.) befriends a prostitute (Eva Mattes) and is harshly harassed by her pimps. Together, along with an elderly friend (Clemens Scheitz), the trio decides to flee Berlin for Wisconsin seeking a better life but only find their miseries compounded. Werner Herzong's Stroszek is a humorous, hauntingly strange, and ultimately powerful film filled with bizarre, unforgettable imagery, heart aching interactions, and one of the most shocking and fascinating finales ever put to film.

**** out of ****

From One Second to the Next is a 35 minute anti-texting public service announcement which I watched solely because it was crafted by Werner Herzog. The short plays like a master class in documentary filmmaking (which, as I always add, is in a sad state) and features four cases of texting-and-driving victims and perpetrators telling their agonizing stories, a vital lesson on something most of us have been guilty of, as told by people whose lives were changed in an instant because of it.

Beginning in the spring (which resembles most people's winter) we are shown a year in the life of several residents of the remote village of Bakhta deep in heart of Siberia. Little affected by the advancements of the last 100 years and still using many prehistoric methods for their craft, we watch how a trapper, boat builder, and other locals ply their trade. Happy People began as an extended documentary made by Russian Dmitry Vasyukov for Euro television which caught the eye of Werner Herzog who decided to collaborate with the directed, reediting it and adding his own narration on a much shorter version. The result is compelling, featuring beautiful and some even seemingly impossible footage, and some unforgettable moments also: a trapper telling how the Russian government left him and a friend out in the wilderness, never returning to restock their supplies, with his partner soon giving up the ship also. Another story of a bear mauling his dog is just as harrowing. His daylong trip into town to celebrate New Year's with his pup running beside his sled is extraordinary and even the day to day rigmarole captured is fascinating in its own way.

note: the DVD contains two features of interest, one which explains how Herzog became involved with the film and a second which makes an argument for his director's credit by showing a clip from the original series, the shooting of which he had no involvement with whatsoever.

Having always been fed up by routinary and a rampant lack of imagination in the movies, Werner Herzog has spent his directing career fashioning daring and fascinating films, which push the limits of viewer expectations.  In "Aguirre: The Wrath of God",  one of his early masterworks, Herzog brought his camera and crew to the unpredictable wilderness of the Amazon, and crafted a dreamlike film about Spanish Conquistadors on the road to El Dorado and a tale of madness run wild. When conditions become too arduous for General Pizarro's crew, he sends a scouting party of forty men to find El Dorado, or at least a resting place where they can seek nourishment. A lieutenant is chosen to lead the expedition, but is soon undermined and overthrown by the mad, power hungry second in command Aguirre (Klaus Kinski). Kinski is a powder keg  seemingly barely able to contain his madness, and ready to boil over at any minute. The film, with its haunting visuals and hypnotic score, is an excellent early work from Herzog, and a warm up of sorts to "Fitzcarraldo", another masterpiece featuring Kinski, again telling a story of hysteria set in the unforgiving terrains of South America.