Venice Film Festival
Keen students of the MTV Movie Awards will be aware that the ceremony added a highly necessary and prestigious award to their lineup for “Best WTF Moment.” I like to imagine that Werner Herzog is aware of this, as his new film “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” (that “The” is no typo – that’s how the title appears onscreen) appears to have been carefully tailored to fill every nominee slot in that category next year.
An iguana bursts into a bluesy rendition of Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Release Me!” Nicolas Cage shares his lucky crack pipe! A man’s soul breakdances after its owner is fatally shot! Iguanas! Nicolas Cage cuts off an octogenarian woman’s oxygen supply! More freaky shit involving iguanas!
It’s been many years since Herzog’s narrative features exuded the sure-footed directorial aplomb of his documentaries, but there is, somewhat surprisingly, a fairly clear artistic objective behind “The Bad Lieutenant”: to make a cult film, the kind of midnight movie treasured by trash geeks, stoners and the occasional leftfield auteurist alike.