June 2019 film review part 2

ROCKETMAN (2019) D- Dexter Fletcher
A man dressed as the Devil walks into an addiction clinic like he owns the joint. He could certainly afford it: he’s Elton John, one of the most successful pop singers in history. So what’s he doing here? Ah, the price of fame...
          Unlike Tristram Shandy, this biopic does start at the beginning, with young Reg Dwight realising he has certain talents, and this being recognised by his Mum (though not Dad) and his music teacher. Some time later he bumps into a guy called Bernie Taupin, who can write songs but not the music, but Reg reckons he was born to do that job for him. The rest as they say, is history...
          Comparisons with Bohemian Rhapsody are inevitable at this point, as both look at the lives of iconic figures in pop music, from humble beginnings to life at the top with all the pitfalls that brings. For my money though, this is the better movie: more tightly scripted, more involving, and with some brilliant set pieces, especially a terrific tapestry of a scene set to the music of Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting. Definitely the film of the summer.

THE GREAT ECSTASY OF WOODCARVER STEINER (1974) D- Werner Herzog
There’s this Austrian dude called Walter Steiner, and he was born to do two things: carve wood and fly, the latter with the assistance of two long skis. In fact he’s so good at ski jumping, can fly so much so much further than anybody else in history, that the organizers have to have him launch off much lower down the slope than everyone else, because if they don’t he’ll go so far he’ll land on the flat and possibly kill himself. Even then he still wins virtually every competition he enters.
          In order to do justice to the great man, director Herzog uses a 500 frames per second slow motion film camera to catch every glorious moment of Steiner’s flights towards the infinite, before coming back to earth, seemingly as light as a feather. And as usual, Herzog works his magic, adding his own distinctive voice-over which adds to the strange, hypnotic atmosphere of the film. This film is available on You Tube, and, in this reviewer’s opinion, is unmissable.