World on a Wire (Rainer Werner Fassbender, 1973)

8/10
Rainer Werner Fassbender directed this two-part sci-fi TV movie. It totals more than 3 1/2 hours in length but it really doesn't feel that long at all. Made in 1973, it prefigures some of what would come later in The Matrix and Avatar, but its central conceit (a scientist in charge of a "supercomputer"that replicates society 20 years in the future begins to question his own reality and sanity in turn) could have come from any number of Twilight Zone episodes preceding it. Its most attractive feature is the outlandish set designs, in the "futuristic as seen through the 70's" mode of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris. It drags a bit in the second half but overall it's pretty entertaining if not exactly enlightening.

Berlin Alexanderplatz (Rainer Werner Fassbender, 1980)

6/10
What can you do when you're in the middle of a 15 1/2 hour long film/TV series/serial/whatever and you're just not that into it? Just keep on pushing through, I guess. There were moments of brilliance in Rainer Werner Fassbender's lengthy adaptation of Alfred Doblin's novel but too few and far in between for me. The story centres around the massive Franz Biberkopf, newly released from prison on account of killing his lover/prosititute, now attempting to go straight in 1920's Berlin. There were things I really liked: the poetic tone of the entire series; the brilliant character Reinhold, the closest thing in the story to an antagonist; the depiction of 1920's Berlin and all the little details like the "KINO" sign constantly strobing into Franz's apartment; his landlady Mrs. Bast; the incredible, dreamlike episode 12 with Reinhold and Franz's new love Mieze; and the surreal epilogue which blew the doors off everything preceding it, reminiscent of what David Lynch did on Twin Peaks some 10 years later. Overall though I was bored a lot of the time - it was hard to see the point of a lot of what was happening on screen, and it seems like an obvious thing to say about a work lasting as long as this one, but it really could have benefitted from being a lot shorter. It's certainly an experience and I'm happy, in the end, that I undertook it, but it's not something I'll be revisiting any time soon.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbender, 1974)

7/10
It was good but a little...hmm...dated? I don't know. Maybe we've been beaten over the heads too much with the "love that society frowns upon" story since the movie came out. I mean it was well-acted and all, but I was just left feeling kinda blasé about the whole thing. I think the colors in this movie impressed me more than anything, which is maybe a weird thing to say.