Cheyenne - This must be the Place
Huh, that was a suprise. I´ve seen the trailer for this some months back and was dissapointed because it did seem empty and pointless as a movie. Also, for a movie about a broken popstar it was very strangely made. The trailer now. So imagine my suprise, when a few days ago an associate of mine burst trough with news of this as a "really good movie about a really fucked up story.". Now, I am not always one for the stranger stories, for I too crave a certain entertainment out of these movies, but I will also be the first to admit that , if the movie has that certain Je´ne se quoi, then by the god-emperor, I will see it, and even if it is it the damn near last thing I do. So I did. I mean, come on, Sean Penn has made some pretty good roles in the previous years, so why not now?
Yeah, why not now? Actually, he did play very well, but I have to say that I was genuinely creeped out by the character he portrayed. Penn plays Cheyenne, a former Popstar singer from some 20 to 30 years back who fell into a deep well of depression and seclusion after several teens killed themselves in regards to his music. Something, which he never got over. Since then he has been living with his wife in a really ´effin big house with much land somewhere in Ireland, unable to move on, only in between getting real contact with life. Penn plays this part up and you can see it, and I don´t mean that he hams around like a Brian Blessed be doing, Oh No Siree!
In fact I felt disgusted by the character he portrayed, despite trying to understand how one man must tick that he could fall down so far. In the course of the movie you come to know that he has jewish roots and that his father, now dead, was giving his life for the hate and hunt of a former german nazi war criminal. A small fish, sure, but for Cheyennes father, whom we get to know only in his death and beyond, the tattooed number on his arm from Auschwitz is all that made his life miserable and fed a hatred enduring even beyond the grave, as it comes to Cheyenne to end what his father could not. And so, Cheyenne begins a track troughout the United States, looking in his own ways for the man who once made his father so miserable, wo tortured and punished him so much, that he could not but bear a hatred so great that his life be consumed in the course of it.
On his way, he meets an interesting lot of people and we see a very strange, yet endearing display of one man, trying to find a way to understanding his father, the man he never got to know and find himself in the course of it.
The movie has the standard quality of a good cinema movie, as for it´s genre it´s something of a Drama, partly Slice-of-Life, partly psychological Discovery. The other actors are okay, even though I found David Byrne kind of wasted in the cameo, but hey. No wait, I do not mean that the way it is written. I found his performance satisfactory but ultimately pointless, for I found it does not add much to the movie, and that 20 seconds that are important within that scene could have been included more strongly somewhere else, but then again, that´s just me.
All in all a good movie, but also with a heavy air. This is not a movie you rent to enjoy with friends, this is something if you want to pervade in the ... artsy direction of cinema ;)
Iron Sky
This move on the other hand can be seen with friends, and lots of it, and the more the better. This movie has it all, nazis from space, black humour, internet memes, satire, political jokes and Udo Kier. This awe-inspiring potpurri of ingredients required several years to finally come to terms with itself but what came out of it is roaring fun.
In 1945 the nazis left earth for the dark side of the moon and are returning 2018 in the course of a botched presidental campaign space mission to earth, more specifically the United States and New York, to be precise, for there is no other place in the US than New York, alt least in every other movieverse, as they believe the space mission to be preparation from allied forces to finally defeat the nazis once and for all. As such, they begin the counterinvasion, complete with zeppelins, giant cannons, space battles and "Reichsflugscheiben". This movie is completely insane in its plot but as I said before, you just roll with it and have fun. Of course there are plotholes, but those are meant to be there, this movie is not one for the heavy thinkers but for humour, even if of the more intelligent sort. And boy did I laugh.
Frankly, there is not much for me to say. To see such movies being made and brought to the big screen tells me, that somewhere people still care for the medium and the stories they tell and that not all is invaded by the Dream Machine Hollywood as so many are persistent to claim. If you like wacky nazi stories and a good fight, then you jolly well better go see this, gov´!
