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Bad Call, Lieutenant of New Orleans Port

By Genevieve Burgess | DVD Releases | April 6, 2010 |

By Genevieve Burgess | DVD Releases | April 6, 2010 |


Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans: “When once blasting the Cinéma Vérité documentary film movement, a movement driven by the desire for some form of indexical truth between film and the real world nurtured via a “fly on the wall” aesthetic, director Werner Herzog noted that “there are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached through fabrication and imagination and stylization.” Herzog, an eclectic director of both documentaries and fiction films, has often followed this approach in the past in both modes of filmmaking through one continuous approach. In the majority of his films, Herzog chooses to accentuate what are often tales of madness with an aesthetic focus that de-emphasize the drama in favor of the landscape and the role of nature in such processes, shifting film away from objective truth towards something more subjective and expressionistic. Viewers familiar with Herzog’s filmmaking are no doubt familiar with this trope, as it brings to mind so many seminal scenes from his films: the feverish spinning of a raft in Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972), the dancing chicken in Stroszek (1977), or the story about an insane penguin in Encounters at the End of the World (2007). Well, after seeing Herzog’s latest, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), they’ll be adding one more scene to that list: Lt. Terrance McDonagh (Nicolas Cage), under the influence of cocaine, imagines a pair of iguanas in the midst of a police stakeout and asks his partner (Val Kilmer), “What are those fuckin’ iguanas doing on my coffee table?”” - Drew Morton

Also released this week: Dirt! The Movie, Dolan’s Cadillac, Finn on the Fly, Home of the Giants, I’m No Dummy, La France, Plunder: The Crime of Our Time, War Eagle, Arkansas, Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love