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Grizzly Man (2005)
Herzog's editing and narration was masterful
In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt demonstrated to us how evil can be banal; Mr. Herzog has, in his own way, done something just as revolutionary with Grizzly Man: he has shown us the banality that lies at the heart of insanity, for Mr. Treadwell was clearly bonkers, and yet, in hearing his rants and ecstasies among the bears, I could only think, How Pathetic. In Shakespeare, the fools and jesters are often tasked with stating the profundities that other characters are too blind or craven to express. Treadwell's insanity offers no such nuggets, but merely the predictably vague moralizing of an obviously sick man. I did feel a real pity for his female companion. There are so many cautionary tales here, it doesn't bear (pun unintended) listing them all; this is a credit to Mr. Herzog.
Still, Treadwell's footage survives him, and as an ecological document, is very fine stuff.
The Last Hard Men (1976)
Mediocre
This movie's not so bad, but I went into it with really low expectations. Yes, it's violent...no big deal. The movie's flaws are many, but it's heart is in the right place in trying to play around with the concept of a traditional western. Only problem with this is that by the mid 70s when it was made, everybody was doing the same thing, with better results I might add. What I mean by that is the script and story just copy some of the innovations of other new-style westerns -- the casual violence, the moral ambiguity, etc. -- but doesn't seem to really appreciate the full import of what it's doing in terms of the narrative and the characters. So what you get is the packaging of a new-style western draped across the same old saccharine BS that westerns typically have; hence the ending, when 'hero' and 'villain' shoot each other, the villain dies, and then the hero's daughter and fiancé attend to the hero's wounds...fade and cut. So it goes. All in all, better than I would have thought, but far from good.
Das Goebbels-Experiment (2005)
There are better movies
My complaints here concern the movie's pacing and the material at hand. While using archival film and letters lends the film a fresh and interesting perspective, too often the material selected to highlight simply isn't very interesting (such as when Goebbels complains about this or that ailment, &tc., or the ad nauseam footage of his small German hometown). Also, the movie crawls along in covering c. 1920-1939 and then steams through the war years. In sum, the film is little better than a History Channel documentary, with the exception that the filmmaker has a slightly greater sensibility than your average History Channel documentary editor and thus can more artfully arrange the details of Goebbels' life. Still, I found it wanting.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
Enjoyed it tho mindful of the clock
Those who went to film school probably enjoyed it; those who didn't could probably take it or leave it. If you're in for self-conscious storytelling, textbook sight gags, and ironic deployment of movie cliché, then you'll like The Life Aquatic. Having said that, I enjoyed it - it was different. If Mr. Anderson didn't try so hard to be quirky and worked more on story and script, it would have been masterful. Still I'm awe-struck with his rich imagination. The red-cap-and-speedos gag throughout was great. The ship-tour sequence was interesting and seemed to draw inspiration from the "sepsis" sequence from Three Kings. But just when the story seemed to venture into something unironic and enlightening, Mr. Anderson's hipness gets the better of him - he doesn't risk enough in the end, so the ironic clichés are all you get. Too bad, because the premise is hilariously promising. It's not so much whether you "get" it (really, there's nothing to get save for a couple of modish film-school gimmicks), but whether you want to watch 2 hours of a quirky young director's search for something to say. I suspect one day he'll find it...just didn't happen in this movie.