SunnyHello Nice effects though.

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Stroszek" is a German movie from almost 40 years ago and the second collaboration between Werner Herzog and Bruno S. Herzog initially planned to cast him as Woyzeck, but chose Kinski for the role. To make it up to Bruno, Herzog wrote this film here and it turned into one of his biggest successes with Bruno giving the lead character his uniquely memorable touch. He is a man who gets released out of jail and needs to stay away from the booze in order to lead a normal life again. After some violent trouble with a pair of pimps, Bruno, his girl (played by Eva Mattes, who got a German Film Award nomination for her turn) and a friend move to the United States of America. And for the rest of the film we see how life for Bruno and his guys is over there. Sadly, the American Dream is collapsing pretty quickly.The film runs for over 105 minutes and I personally found the parts in Germany early on more interesting really. But that is not saying that the second half of the film wasn't good. I thought it was a very decent watch from start to finish and I find it a pity Herzog hasn't made more films with Bruno or that Bruno has not starred in other movies in the 1970s and 1980s. I definitely liked watching him. In here as well as in Kaspar Hauser from 3 years earlier. People may say that there is not really that much happening in "Stroszek", but first of all I don't think this is a valid criticism per se and secondly actually there is a lot happening. Life is happening. We see a man going for his dream, but sadly things don't go the way he hoped in the long run. I recommend "Stroszek"- This film is more proof of how good Herzog was in the 1960s. And for authentic and honest Bruno S.'s acting was at the same time. Go check it out.

Robert J. Maxwell At the climax of this somewhat tragic tale, Bruno, a German immigrant whose quest for happiness in America has failed, goes on an amateur, what-the-hell crime spree, turns on all the exhibits in a barren mid-winter Indian tourist trap, and climbs aboard a cable car for a final trip to the mountain top, carrying a shotgun and a frozen turkey. One of the exhibits he activates is a piano-playing chicken who hammers out an impeccable version of Schubert's Scherzo in B Minor. Another is a dancing chicken. The chicken walks out into a glass case, plucks a piece of string, and begins scratching atop a slowly revolving round table the size of an old record player. The Tribal Police arrive and examine the scene of the crime, which includes a burning truck and a recently robbed grocery store. One of the cops is on the squad car's radio. "We got a single passenger on the lift and an electrician's on his way out. Somebody turned on the electricity and we can't stop the dancing chicken." The director, Werner Herzog, lingers on that chicken, scratching away over and over on a revolving platter, his head completely empty of thought. What are we to make of all this? Except that we are all dancing chickens manipulated by some deranged outer force.If it isn't that, then I'm lost.A good case could be made that this movie is utterly pointless. Bruno, a shabby caricature of a man, is released from an institution and returns to his apartment in Berlin, where he has two friends. One is an elderly eccentric and the other an abused whore. The pixy-like old man carries on about how easy it is to get rich and live happily in America. The whore saves up her money and the three of them travel to a truck stop in Wisconsin. They buy a mobile home and a television set and things look bright for a while, until they fall behind in their mortgage payments.Sick of it all and desperate, the hooker takes off in one of the trucks for Canada. The old man goes bonkers and believes it's all a conspiracy, so he and the not-too-bright Bruno hold up a barber shop, run across the street, and begin buying groceries. The old man is arrested for armed robbery, Bruno steals a truck, takes off on his own, and finally runs out of money and gas at the Indian tourist trap.My old German grandpappy had a saying: "Ein Mann hat das Bodel und ein Mann hat das Gelt." Some people have money and others wind up with the bag. Bruno and his friends -- and even his enemies -- are losers from beginning to end. It's a long, slow story of social suicide. All three end up worse than they began, as bad as that was.And when I say "long", I mean "long." Herzog -- here as elsewhere -- has a tendency to hold on stylized shots for a long long long time. The camera is placed behind and above Bruno as a huge truck pulls his forfeited mobile home away. The camera remains static as the mobile home sluggishly departs to the right. The camera stays in the same place and so does Bruno, who is now staring at the empty space that his mobile home had occupied. He continues to stare as the seconds tick by and a scratchy old record plays a tune called "Silver Bells." If you're patient, and if you're sensitive to mood and character and composition, you'll get much more out of this movie than if you're expecting some plot-driven dynamo.I'd like to compare this to Robert Altman's exercises in improvisation but I can't. One senses an intentionality behind Herzog's stuff that's absent from Altman's movies. What I mean is, Herzog seems to have something in mind behind the apparent non sequiturs and stylized shots. Herzog has a goal, whereas many of Altman's movies seemed designed for nothing more than seeing what happened next. In a sense, Altman stays with the dancing chicken because that's all there is, while Herzog believes that there is somebody turning the machine on and off.

TedMichaelMor The richness of "Stroszek" strengthens with multiple viewings. Haunting cinematography by Thomas Mauch has a bitter-sweet humor faithful to mid-century American experience. Underscored by sentimental American popular tunes many from Chet Akins presage "Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes" enhanced by pensive editing by Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus. The late Bruno Schleinstein plays a protagonist. If you do not know his story,watch the film and then read about him. In the film, he also plays (his) piano, accordion, glockenspiel, and hand bells. This is music by Bruno S. himself. Even though the movies tells a story set in America, it is a film about Bruno S. and, in an important way, a film for him.Eva Mattes, famous for her work in four masterworks by Rainer Maria Fassbinder, brings a dry, sardonic sense to what might have been a maudlin role. Many who play in the film are amateurs the crew met on location. The second cameraman Edward Lachman often improvised English language dialogue in the moment. Literally, Mr. Herzog used the people he and the crew met at the moment. Sometimes, especially in the sections shot in Germany, those playing the role were known ahead of the shooting. The scenes early in the movie with a brutal pimp are played by a brutal pimp. The premature baby is with an actual doctor who works with premature babies.Editor Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus took part in the shooting. Improvisation plays a major part in the tonality of "Stroszek". With Bruno S. and others, improvisation plays a vital and central role though Bruno knows what he is to do.This is a terrific film that I relate to Michael Ritchie's "Smile", another masterwork that explores similar themes. Yet, Herzog's view of American life is not bitter like that of Mr. Ritchie. It is brutal—but not meanly so. I think that the meanness has more to do with the story than with Mr. Herzog's opinion of the United States. He admits to having deep affection for the heartland of American and to the people who live there. For one who loves the immense formal beauty of European Modern French, Swedish, and Italian films, watching German movies is sometimes hard in some ways. Many films from the wave of German movies of which Herzog's work is part and example have a hard look. Some of them are hard to watch. The humour is hard even if it softens bitterness. This is not an optimistic film but that is not the mood that Herzog finds about America. It is simply the mood of the story. Do not listen to the commentary on the DVD until you first watch this film without it. Then do listen to the commentary. From the commentary, you learn precisely how the movie blurs lines between documentary and fictional film narrative. In the end, we realize the "Brave New World" image of conditioned life in America—in the trained rabbit and poultry, a duck and especially a chicken, at Cherokee,North Carolina. Sonny Terry, blowing his fierce blues harmonica, beats the frantic and pointless pace at which we live. Funny and tragic but not mean, these images infect your memory.

zetes Herzog reunites with Bruno S. The film begins with S. being released from jail after some public drunkenness. After some hard times involving his girlfriend's pimps, he and she (Eva Mattes) decide to accompany a friend who is moving to America. They end up in small town Wisconsin. Unfortunately, life is no better there. I have avoided this film for a while because, from the description, it sounded kind of anti-American and maybe particularly anti-Wisconsin, the state in which I grew up. Those fears were unfounded. Herzog, of course, is not that kind of guy, and he spends a lot of his time in the United States. This isn't even really a satire, like I thought it would be. Unfortunately, I don't think it's much of anything. Bruno S. is such a messed-up person (both in real life and in the characters he played for Herzog) that the fact that he can't adjust to life in America is neither surprising nor at all damning. It seems like life is going to be hard for the guy no matter where he goes. Because of that, it's kind of hard to get too invested in this movie. It never feels like Herzog had much of a plan for it, anyway, and it just kind of plods along. I did love the final sequence. I could watch that chicken dance for two hours.