The Screengrab : fitzcarraldo

Video of the Day: "Please Kill Mr. Kinski"

Phil Nugent — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Last week we reported that Ecco Press will soon publish Werner Herzog's journals written during the production of Fitzcarraldo, which starred Klaus Kinski, who made five films with Herzog when he was alive and, posthumously, played the title role in Herzog's documentary My Best Fiend.. In the clip above, Herzog gets a little misty-eyed as he remembers when the Peruvian Indians who were employed as extras on the set, and who had to listen to Kinksi's endless, eardum-shattering tirades, sweetly asked the director if they'd like for them to see if the actor would be a little less noisy if his head and torso were on separate ends of the room. You might guess that this is as muc a Herzog story as it is a Kinski story, but apparently this was not the last time that someone working with Kinksi on a movie developed a dreamy smile while imagining what the star would look like with pennies on his eyes. More surprisingly, it was not the last time that the director had to do some fast talking to keep his leading man upright until the shoot was finished. In 1986, David Schmoeller directed Kinski in the horror movie Crawlspace; thirteen years later, he described the experience in the wry remembrance below, which we remember seeing for the first time on John Pierson's late, lamented IFC TV series Split Screen. The sound is a little off, but Kinski-lovers and haters alike will find it worth the effort.

Watch It For Free: Eight Werner Herzog Movies

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:00:00 GMT

YouTube’s new partnership with big-name studios is already paying dividends for us cheap bastards who like to watch movies for free on our computrons. In association with Starzmedia, YouTube is now offering eight full-length Werner Herzog movies for your viewing pleasure, including Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and Even Dwarfs Started Small. Hit the jump for the linkage:

Here’s the Starzmedia page for the Herzog goodies, including Aguirre, which you can watch below.

(Hat tip to Film Studies for Free, which also offers links to a wealth of academic writing on Herzog available online.)

Werner Herzog Remembers the Good Old Days in Peru, the Bad New Days in New Orleans

Phil Nugent — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Fitzcarraldo, the 1982 epic that Werner Herzog shot in the jungles of Peru, using a team of locals to pull a 320-ton steamboat up a mountain, may have been the most troubled production of the director's long and adventurous career, though the competition for that title is fierce. (Herzog had shot an estimated forty percent of the film when his star, Jason Robards, was sidelined by amoebic dysentery, after which his co-star, Mick Jagger, had to abandon the project to fulfill a commitment to tour with his day job, the Rolling Stones. Herzog wrote Jagger's role out of the script and replaced Robards with Klaus Kinski, the only known instance in movie history of someone bringing Klaus Kinksi in to stabilize a situation.) It's probably the most well-documented production in Herzog's career, though. The director Les Blank recorded it all in his won 1982 feature documentary Burden of Dreams, and now it's reported that, in June, Ecco Press is bringing out Herzog's journals written during the production, under the title Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo. For those of you who can't wait, The Paris Review has a selection in their Spring 2009 issue. ("These texts are not reports on the filming --of which little is said. Nor are they journals, except in a very general sense. They might be described instead as inner landscapes, born of the delirium of the jungle. But even that may not be entirely accurate--I am not sure." Coming from anyone else but Werner, this sort of thing would count as discouraging.) The excerpt isn't available online, but hey, it's a good magazine, so throw them twelve bucks if you're so inclined.

Herzog also just checked in with John Patterson, giving him a quick rundown of the current busy state of his movie career at his Laurel Canyon home, because he still considers himself to be a filmmaker and all this "man of letters" business is making him nervous. Herzog, who credits his global viewpoint to the fact that he "had seen much of the world before I was 20, and I had experienced it in a very fundamental way - being on foot, in Africa, in danger," actually had to take his age into account--he's now 66--when deciding not to imperil his life by shooting some icy underwater footage himself on his Antarctica documentary Encounters at the End of the World. However, he braved New Orleans, Nicolas Cage, and the wrath of Abel Ferrara on the movie he recently finished, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Werner insists that, previous reports to the contrary, this is not a remake or a reboot of or a sequel to Ferrara's 1992 scuzzball classic, which came complete with rape on a church altar, visions of Jesus, and full-frontal Keitel. It seems that producer Ed Pressman owns the rights to the title and just wanted to use it on a new project. "I was assured," says Herzog, "that this was not related to another film of a similar name. I told them, 'If you swear on the heads of your children.' I also had hints from Nicolas Cage that he wouldn't sign unless he knew I was directing, which is a good way to start a film." Herzog was keen to shoot in New Orleans "because, after Katrina, you were in a situation where civil life came to a breakdown. Not merely because the hurricane caused a lot of material destruction, but it also created a collapse of civility - looting and, by the way, the police were heavily involved in that, too." And the producers were hot to shoot there too, because of "the tax incentives."

Herzog is "also in the process of wrapping up another film, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, produced by David Lynch and loosely based on a gruesome matricide in San Diego in the 1980s, starring Michael Shannon...This being a Herzog movie, the suburban footage is interspersed with scenes - visions, perhaps - captured in Central Asia and Peru. He calls it 'sort of a horror movie'." This all amounts to the most time Herzog has spent working with actors and scripts for quite some time, now; most of his filmography for the last several years has been devoted to nonfiction filmmaking. (The biggest and most recent exception, 1996's Rescue Dawn with Christian Bale, was based on the same story that Herzog had already used a decade earlier for his documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly.) Not that he sees much difference, of course; this is a guy who, in 1991's Lessons of Darkness, presented footage of the smoking, apocalyptic aftermath of the Gulf War as a science fiction film, and who later, in 2005's The Wild Blue Yonder, intercut NASA footage with film of the actor Brad Dourif improvising a monologue recounting his life as an extraterrestrial immgirant. "The distinction between fiction and documentary," says Herzog, "is the last thing I would spend a sleepless night over."

Related stories: Werner Herzog's Very Bad Idea

Strangers in a Strange Land: Special All-Herzog Edition

Strangers In A Strange Land: Special All-Herzog Edition (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:00:00 GMT

FITZCARRALDO & BURDEN OF DREAMS (1982)

“Loveable” is not one of the words that typically springs to mind when describing Klaus Kinski. For example, in the documentary My Best Fiend, Werner Herzog famously tells of South American tribesmen involved with the production of Fitzcarraldo offering to kill the notoriously petulant actor, to which the director replied, “No, for God’s sake! I still need him for shooting!” And yet as Brian Fitzgerald, the crazy gringo opera enthusiast determined against the odds (and basic common sense) to haul a big-ass steamship up and over a muddy hill from one Peruvian river to another, Kinski actually manages to make obsessive, quixotic insanity appealing, even inspiring. Les Blank does the same for Herzog himself in Burden Of Dreams, a fascinating companion documentary about the outrageously arduous production of the film about Fitzgerald’s outrageously arduous undertaking. Both movies feature half-crazed Europeans determined to bend reality to their will in a brutal, untamed environment (while anonymous, dark-skinned natives do all the heavy lifting), an interlocking double helix of parallel parables about the pros and cons of Western civilization. As critic Paul Arthur notes in an essay comparing Fitzcarraldo and Burden of Dreams, Herzog’s movie champions the white man’s burden, “exuding an almost mystical admiration for the crazed adventurer,” while Blank more or less sides with the native “extras” in the background, preferring their “rhythms of collective effort, of sensuous community, over Eurocentric ideals of heroic individualism”...yet despite all the cultural and philosophical differences between Herzog, Blank and the Peruvian Indians, it is somewhat reassuring to note the common humanity in the fact that pretty much everyone thought Kinski was a hot mess.

AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD (1972)

In the opening scene above, the Andes are lined with Spanish conquistadors, ladies of royal carriage, men of God and their trappings, and machinery of war, all of which seem violently out of place among the serene and indifferent mountains. What drives men to try to claim that which should not be disturbed? Why would rational people who sail halfway around the world to search for a new source of power cling so stubbornly and foolishly to the power they left behind? Herzog's movie doesn't have the answer, but the questions he asks are all the more powerful for their plunge into the unknown. Things will continue to go wrong. Claiming ownership and mastery over a hostile environment is quite different from owning or mastering it. Although one man may possess the drive and need to take himself well beyond the norm, the world does not usually bend itself to any one man's will. Herzog will return to this theme time and again.

ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (2007)

Few among us could ask questions about the strangeness of the natural world with the eloquence of Werner Herzog at the beginning of last year's documentary about Antarctica, Encounters At The End Of The World. Among the seasonal workers and high-concept scientists he finds on the frozen continent, the strangers are us, the viewers. It seems glib to say that the extremes of Antarctica attract people who engage with the extremities of the world, but the people Herzog interviews have, to a person, a way of looking at the world with awe and curiosity that suggests astronauts or high priests marked by their encounters with the unknown. Their experience with the strangeness of the world has given them a strangeness of their own. Or perhaps they already had the strangeness, which led them to seek out the extreme. Either way, Herzog continues his quest to suggest as directly and beautifully as possible that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Or mine.

One of the best sequences involves the mandatory survival training required of anyone leaving the base camp for the wilds of Antarctica. The instructors simulate a white-out rescue but placing buckets over the participants' heads and directing them to try to find an outhouse from their trailer using a rope and a human chain. The first one out makes a relatively minor mistake early on and the following cascading series of errors gets everyone far off path and hopelessly tangled. Herzog points out on the commentary track that this is how movies are made, also.

STROSZEK (1977)

Werner Herzog once said, "Perhaps I seek certain utopian things, space for human honour and respect, landscapes not yet offended, planets that do not exist yet, dreamed landscapes." Herzog's films are perfectly suited to a list like this one, none more so than his magical 1977 film Stroszek. Taking the stranger-in-a-strange-land premise and tripling it, Stroszek takes three German outcasts -- a former mental patient (Bruno S.), a skeletal old man (Clemens Scheitz), and a prostitute (Eva Mattes) -- and uproots them to the American heartland. The protagonists move to Wisconsin in order to escape their difficult lives, but it's typical of Herzog's approach that the United States isn't seen as a paradise, but is merely a different kind of strange than the world his characters already know. Mattes is the best equipped to make money for them, and she goes to work as a waitress, but once the trio's finances dwindle, she falls back on prostitution to pay the bills. Meanwhile, Scheitz is too old to work, spending his days wandering the landscape and pondering such ideas as animal magnetism. And there are few opportunities in this small town for an ex-street performer like Bruno, so all he can do is wait for the bank to come and repossess their home, a moment we witness in forlorn long shot as Bruno stands by, helpless. America was hardly a land of opportunity for Bruno and his friends, yet I don't think Herzog is condemning the U.S. in Stroszek. Instead, he seems to be saying that there are some people like Bruno who just don't have the resources to make it anywhere, whether they're in an Old World country of gangsters who are predisposed to pulling apart musical instruments, or a new land of truck stops and dancing chickens.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four & Six

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Hayden Childs, Paul Clark

Visions of Change: Cinematic Utopias & Worst Case Scenarios (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

METROPOLIS (1927)

The granddaddy of cinematic dystopias, Fritz Lang’s science fiction masterpiece will probably get a re-release in the not too distant future, now that long-lost footage from the original 1927 cut has turned up in a film museum in Argentina (at least according to the German paper Die Zeit). The film’s Art Deco production design has influenced everything from Star Wars, Blade Runner and Tim Burton’s Gotham City to Madonna’s “Express Yourself” video, but the story is even more universal, with its (sadly) timeless depiction of a society where the rich are supported by the suffering of the unseen, overworked poor and power is maintained through divisive lies spread by sexy robots.

CHILDREN OF MEN (2006)

Utopia is about a singular view of perfection. Dystopia is when that view does not include everyone. As literature has shown over and over again, Utopia (which means, literally "no place") cannot exist because people cannot get along. How can any one idea of perfection work for everyone? Democracy is the closest form of government to perfection yet created. The most people can work for the best outcome. The rights of those in the minority are protected by law. Simple and beautiful. But even here in the good old U.S. of A., we've done our level best to fuck it up. In the last eight years, we've stripped civil liberties to the bone and bought into a viewpoint of fear so foul that we have allowed our leaders to demonize everyone who subscribes to the world's second-largest religion. We've gone into an unwinnable war for reasons that seemed spurious at the time and have since proved absurd. We allow representatives of our media to smear citizens who would dare to question our leaders' judgment. And the outgoing guy (two more months!), the guy responsible for the bulk of these travesties, received more votes in the last election from citizens in this democracy than any prior candidate. But it's a brave new world. Even more people voted for the new guy. He's promising "change," which isn't a hard thing to live up to, but he says that he believes in hope and believes that he can make things better for more people...but if not, we may end up with something akin to the 2006 adaptation of P.D. James’ novel Children of Men, set in the last days of humanity, when the world has fallen into chaos. There are no children; there is no future for the human race. The only surviving government that we see is Great Britain's, and it has clamped down on immigration with a vengeance that can only be described as Lou-Dobbsian. Terrorist bombings are common. So are death camps and torture. The rich hide themselves away behind gates and armed guards and think about the death of culture, while their police and policies ensure that everyone else just thinks about death. Alfonso Cuaron's film looks on the works of man and does not flinch.

THE NEW WORLD (2005)

In Terrence Malick's version of the Pocahontas story, the Jamestown settlers are criminals and layabouts pretending to be pioneers and soldiers. The new world has given them a chance to begin again, to make everything right even though they've previously made a mess of their lives. There's two problems right off the bat: a) they want to force the new world into their own image of it, despite the people already occupying it, and b) they don't know how. Force is the usual answer, but understanding is the extraordinary one. The settlers opt for Plan A, but one of the native new worlders grasps at Plan B. Understanding has its own set of problems, not least that it cannot last. Humanity is about strife and force; one person alone cannot elide the genetic imperative that leads to violence over property and ways of life. She pushes herself, though. Assimilates. Knows love. Knows wisdom. Knows the impossibility of her task. But she continues to push understanding, onward to the next new world, from which no messages return.

LA JETEE (1962)

The future is all used up. Those in power among the survivors of World War III need help from other time periods. They have developed an idea of time travel based on memory and send a man back to a fixed image in his head. They visit a fallen tree, echoing Vertigo, and he points out beyond its rings to show her where he's from. Later, he goes to the future, where he secures the power source his society needs to continue to survive. His own time has no use for him anymore, but they fear his happiness. And he may be dreaming, but it's a dream that propels him towards death.

WEEK END (1967)

Ordinary dispute erupts into shocking violence. In one of cinema’s greatest tracking shots, as our oblivious protagonists weave through a traffic jam that seems to stretch out to infinity, the framework of society falls to shambles. They are on the way to murder one's father for the insurance money. Godard’s children of Marx and Coca-Cola (I know, that’s from a different movie) start out with every luxury available and end with pigs slaughtered by know-nothing revolutionaries in the woods. Violence is so commonplace that they can't even see it. I'm fairly certain this is what would have happened within a week of a John McCain victory.

FITZCARRALDO (1982)

This movie is built around one man’s mad and obsessive utopian scheme to bring an opera house to the jungle. He fails - everyone fails at perfection - but he fails spectacularly. Herculean feats, madness, and the looming specter of death all haunt this movie. Be sure to watch it with the documentary Burden of Dreams, in which you can see how close Werner Herzog gets to his vision.

Click Here for Part One, Part Two & Part Three

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Hayden Childs

Set Your DVR!: November 3 - 10, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Whew! I'm happy that the Halloween season is over! I watched a ton of great movies, but I have horror fatigue. Let's see what the next week has to offer. There's some world-class movies on TV this week!

Mon, Nov 3:

10:30/11:30 am: The Man From Laramie on TCM. Anthony Mann Western with James Stewart. Not the best Mann Western, but it’ll do.

4:15/5:15 pm: I Am David on IFC. Paul “Freaks & Geeks” Feig directs a completely unfunny and somewhat mawkish film about a boy who escapes a Stalinist concentration camp and learns to love. Feig is awesome, but this movie is not. Consider this a warning.

7/8 pm: True Stories on VH1CL. David Byrne’s labor of love, a deliberately quirky look at America from one of its deliberately quirky pop culture figures.

8/9 pm: Me and You and Everyone We Know on IFC (repeat 11/4 at 12/1 am). Miranda July is cute and a little alienating. John Hawkes learned from Deadwood the fine art of saying everything he has to say with his eyebrows. Somehow, despite the nearly lethal levels of kookiness, July has made a movie with an enormous amount of heart.

Tues, Nov 4:

UPDATED!

9:05/10:05 am: The F Word on IFC (repeat at 4:05/5:05 pm). Catch the Screengrab's own Andrew Osborne as the character mysteriously named "Andrew!" Thanks to Scott Von D for the hat tip.

10:30/11:30 am: Grand Theft Parsons on IFC (repeat at 5:30/6:30 pm and on 11/5 at 4:55/5:55 am). Not a great movie, but it's about the untimely demise of Gram Parsons and what happened thereafter.

7/8 pm Decision at Sundown on TCM. Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott in a taut little no-budget Western. Not the best of their collaborations, but it's decent.

Wed, Nov 5:

9/10 am: The Straight Story on FX. David Lynch's G-rated film about an aging man who travels via lawnmower to make amends with his long-estranged brother. It's utterly fantastic.

11:30 am/12:30 pm: Burden of Dream on IFC. Les Blank's documentary about Werner Herzog's maddening attempts to make Fitzcarraldo. This is the rare film where the making-of documentary is better than the fiction. If you haven't seen it, this is essential viewing. You will reach the other side in greater awe of Herzog, nature, Kinski, madness, and the folly of human ambition.

12:30/1:30 pm: The Blue Gardenia on TCM. A scalding film noir by Fritz Lang.

8/9 pm: 24 Hour Party People on IFC (repeat on 11/6 at 12/1 am). Some of the Factory Records bands are stunning, and some (The Happy Mondays in particular) are dull and overrated. But Tony Wilson was mesmerizing, and Michael Winterbottom's postmodern bio makes the case for his greatness.

10/11 pm: The Filth and the Fury on IFC (repeat on 11/6 at 2/3 am). If you're curious about the Sex Pistols, this is the definitive documentary.

Thurs, Nov 6:

1:45/2:45 pm: The Awful Truth on TCM. Pretty much the greatest screwball comedy.

5:05/6:05 pm: Ride with the Devil on IFC (repeat on 11/7 at 4:40/5:40 am). Ang Lee's odd Civil War drama where everybody's on the wrong side of history.

Fri, Nov 7:

8/9 am: Heavenly Creatures on LOGO. Before the Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson directed this movie about the intensity of fantasy in a teenage friendship and the lengths to which two girls actually went (this is based on a true story) to keep themselves together.

Sat, Nov 8:

12:15/1:15 am: La Jetee on TCM. This is the best movie I've recommended yet, and it's only 28 minutes long. I recommend watching it twice in a row, then waiting two weeks and watching it again. See what you remember about it. Watch Vertigo again in the meantime.

1/2 am: The Trip on TCM. This is, like, whoa. And then you'll be all what? And then, man, like, you know, then, you'll get it. And you'll be all really? But you'll know.

7/8 am: Sanshiro Sugata II on IFC. Kurosawa's third film, the sequel to his first. The climactic scene is scarred pretty badly, but Kurosawa's eye is as sharp as ever.

9:30/10:30 am: Picnic at Hanging Rock on IFC (repeat at 4:15/5:15 pm and on 11/9 at 4/5 am). Peter Weir's second feature film, this is an existential horror film. Several girls and a teacher disappear on an outing to Hanging Rock. One girl turns up mysteriously days later. The disparity between the proper Victorian British and the great untamed Australian Outback serves to heighten the oddness of this movie.

Sun, Nov 9:

7/8 am: Amarcord on IFC. The most felliniesque of Fellini films. One of his last major films. I have never thought it was as good as 8 1/2, but it still packs a punch.

9:05/10:05 am: Umberto D on IFC. De Sica's neorealist classic about an old man cast aside by society. Prepare for tears and a greater awareness of the plight of the elderly. You'll never be able to name a dog "Flike."

9:15/10:15 am: The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek on TCM. What a conundrum! Umberto D and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek playing at the same time! This is a fantastic, censor-baiting Preston Sturges comedy. Eddie Bracken may not be the greatest male lead ever, but the jokes come hard and fast.

1:15/2:15 pm: The Cars That Ate Paris on IFC. Peter Weir's first feature film. I've never seen it, but it's bound to be interesting.

8/9 pm: Wild at Heart on IFC (repeat on 11/10 at 2/3 am). This may be David Lynch's worst film. Or maybe it's the one with Sting. Hard to say, but there's still something worthwhile in each.

Mon, Nov 10:

8:20/9:20 am: The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years on IFC (repeat at 3/4 pm). Don't let too many years pass without watching Ozzy make breakfast.

2:45/3:45 pm: Becket on TCM. It's Oscar-bait, sure, but not a bad movie.

Take Five: Psychics

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:15:00 GMT

Death Defying Acts opens in limited release this weekend, and so far, it hasn't generated much advance buzz. It's hard to figure out why: It comes on the heels of other successful movies involving magicians, including The Prestige and The Illusionist; it's a romance-driven period piece (which should attract women), but it features a murder mystery, psychics, and famed escape artist Harry Houdini (for the fellas); it's got an all-star cast led by perennial heartthrobs Guy Pearce and Catherine Zeta-Jones; and it's directed by none other than girl-geek icon Gillian Anderson. Maybe people are confused by the premise: in Death Defying Acts features Zeta-Jones as a spiritualist out to run a con on the master magician. We haven't seen it yet, so we're not sure if Zeta-Jones' powers are portrayed as being authentic, but in real life, Houdini was a relentless skeptic who didn't believe in any aspect of the paranormal, and who, in fact, went out of his way to disprove all claims of the supernatural as buncombe. Regardless, Hollywood has always been a sucker for a good psychic yarn, which probably explains why goofy New Age religions tend to take root in southern California before hitting the rest of the country. For today's Take Five, we bring you a handful of fine films about psychics -- and not a single one starring Shirley MacLaine.

THE SHINING (1980)

Nobody does psychic powers like Stephen King, and nobody realizes those psychic powers on screen better than Stanley Kubrick does in this horror classic. One of the most effective ideas Kubrick had was to de-emphasize Danny's psychic abilities, to tone down the paranormal aspects of the story (such as the hedge topiary coming to life) in order to play up the much more compelling dramatic element of a family in isolation slowly falling apart. Not that the terrifying paranormal elements aren't there: few moments in contemporary horror are creepier than seeing Danny go into a drooling fit, or the bizarre images he sees in the abandoned rooms of the Outlook Hotel -- but by keeping them ambiguous, by allowing the suggestion that none of it is real, that it's all just possibly the byproduct of an epileptic vision or a mind damaged by loneliness and alcohol -- the whole thing is made more compelling and upsetting than if the paranormal elements were made explicit.

SCANNERS (1981)

There's nothing subtle or ambiguous, on the other hand, about David Cronenberg's early sci-fi terror masterpiece. Before his transition to an artist of the decay and dysfunction of the body in modern classics like The Fly, Cronenberg's obsession was the abuse and alteration of the mind -- and as he showed in movies like Altered States, The Brood and Videodrome, an unhinged mind could do a vast amount of damage. Nowhere is this given a sharper point than in his cult classic Scanners, which works pretty much like HIghlander except with exploding heads instead of sword decapitations. As shadowy corporations struggle to control the massive psionic powers of a handful of people, we witness the battle firsthand through the activities of a highly game cast which includes mopey Stephen Lack, sinister Michael Ironside, and hammy Patrick McGoohan. Scanners also features one of our favorite taglines ever: "There are four billion people on Earth. 237 are scanners. And they are winning." Choice!

THE FURY (1978)

After having wet his beak in the unhinged-psychic game with a now-legendary film adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie (see, there's king again), Brian De Palma warmed to the subject and cranked out a modest but highly energetic (and entertaining) teen-psychics-in-trouble picture called The Fury. Featuring Amy Irving and Andrew Stevens as the two fresh-faced kids who have to worry about blowing up a city block instead of needing to pick up some Clearasil, the plot revolves around their being sent to a government research lab where their overseers must walk a thin line between making sure their prize specimens don't get away and make them happy enough that they don't turn their considerable powers on their masters. Playing almost like a trial run of some of David Cronenberg's laer stuff, The Fury is bounding with energy (and not just of the psychic variety), and its B-movie plot is highly abetted by the top-notch cast, including a wildly overaheated Kirk Douglas as Stevens' father and a gravely understated John Cassavetes as one of the government flunkies.

AKIRA (1988)

As any teenager -- including the ones on this list -- can tell you, being young is no picnic. Your body starts to change, girls don't like you and you can't figure out why, you start feeling sick and alienated for no reason, and before you know it, you're hanging out with a bunch of nogoodniks in a biker gang. But if you start to develop horrific psychic powers, ones that can kill your friends, turn you into a grotesque monster, and even level the entire city of Toyko with the power of a nuclear bomb? Well, that, brother, as a very wise man once said, is when your heartaches really begin. Katsuhiro Otomo's groundbreaking animated feature, based on his own graphic novel series, featured stellar animation, top-shelf voice acting, creepy effects, a complex but not incomprehensible storyline (it turns out, to no one's real surprise, that a nefarious military intelligence project is behind poor Akira's transformation into a psionic monstrosity), and some great effects at the movie's unforgettable end all helped open up western markets to both anime and manga, transforming the world of comics and film forever.

INVINCIBLE (2001)

Anyone can make a movie about deranged psychics who threaten the lives of their loved ones. Leave it to Werner Herzog to up the ante by making a movie about a deranged psychic in the employ of the Nazi party who enlists a Jewish strongman to help him put on a carnival show about Siegfried, the legendary Aryan hero of myth. It's this kind of intensely focussed eccentricity, and reckless disregard for making sense, that seperates the men like Herzog from the boys. This was Herzog's first narrative feature after a prolonged stretch of making documentaries, and while it's not nearly in the same league as movies like Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre: The Wrath of God, it's still got his knack for breathtaking imagery and his gift for illustrating the mad inner lives of obsessives in spades. The psychic in question in Invincible is Erik Jan Hanussen, the doomed faux-Dane who, for a while, operated as Hitler's personal clairvoyant until falling out of favor with Der Fuhrer's inner circle and getting himself assassinated. His story is also told in the relatively straightforward biopic Hanussen (1988), but that movie can't compete with Tim Roth's giddy performance or Herzog's fiery direction.