JPNor
Shared on Thu, 03/17/2011 - 18:39I really, really should have learned by now. I saw House of the Dead. I saw Postal. I'm a fan of video games and a fan of movies, so why does Uwe Boll, the shittiest director to ever have been offered a budget, have to be the only person to combine the two?
I'm also a huge fan of WWII history and I'm fascinated by the history of the Holocaust. I read some mixed reviews for Uwe Boll's latest picture, Auschwitz, but decided to check it out anyway. It's a far cry (get it?) from his film adaptations of video games, but unfortunately it's still Uwe Boll.
Granted, I only made it about an hour. And that's only because the first 10 minutes or so were actually entertaining. He starts by interviewing German teenagers about their knowledge of the Holocaust and seeing how horribly miseducated they are about the history of their country. Boll asks one kid when the Holocaust occurred, and he said "It was in the 1800's. 1860 I think." His friend corrected him to say it was closer to 1960. Well, at least he was in the same century.
The film then goes into a dramatization of the day-in, day-out routine of the Jews arriving via train at the Auschwitz death camp. While a trainload of Jews is checking in, another group is being loaded into the gas chamber. Cyanide is poured into the chamber, and you know what happens next.
Then, without rhyme or reason, he recreates the exact same scene with a completely different group. While this is going on we see and hear some interaction between the SS, including some incredibly unsettling scenes inserted for no reason other than Uwe Boll's trademark shock value. But in the entire hour I watched, there was literally only one scene of real dialog. Insert blood, people suffering, and black and white video of nature, and you have an arthouse film, right? No. It's still shit. He clearly is going for arthouse style, and clearly knows nothing about making an arthouse flick. For the record, I can respect when directors take risks, even in shitty artsy flicks. But I can also recognize when something is thrown together by somebody who has no idea how to make a movie.
I gave up during more interviews with more teens. At least one kid knew what the fuck he was talking about, but his education on Nazi Germany consisted of most of the common sense items we all learned in tenth grade history class.
A bunch of people died. Hitler did some bad shit, and Uwe Boll made a bad, shitty film about those people dying. Oops, sorry for the spoiler. I don't consider myself a great writer but I'm convinced that my review is twice as entertaining as the film and you read it in a tenth of the time you would spend watching it.
1/5. The only reason I give it one star is because the first 10 minutes are bearable. Find those 10 minutes on Youtube and skip the rest, and go watch History Channel or something.
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Comments
Submitted by CrypticCat on Thu, 03/17/2011 - 19:38
Submitted by Nunderw00b on Thu, 03/17/2011 - 21:31
Submitted by Habu06 on Fri, 03/18/2011 - 08:32