Bagdad Cafe
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Movie Reviews of Bagdad Cafe
Movie Review: Freak Shows & Oddballs That'll Touch Your Heart
Summary: 5 Stars
Bagdad Cafe is an odd film, and I mean that as a compliment. The characters are all greatly flawed individuals who, as the film starts, are largely unhappy. CCH Pounder plays Brenda who owns the cafe. This woman could scare the hide off a cat with that shrill voice that drives her husband off to park in the desert and observe her with binoculars for the rest of the film. Jasmin, the Bavarian German who likes her coffee strong, is fat and seems to change clothes regularly despite having a suitcase supposedly filled only with men's clothes. She is not the typical Hollywood star, but she comes to win our hearts. Jack Palance as Rudy Cox, the set painter from Hollywood, lives in a trailer and sees the world through rose colored glasses. His costumes are pure Santa Monica Boulevard chic. He charms us as he falls in love. The sequence of paintings he does as Jasmin gets progressively less dressed is hysterical. The other characters are also unique. Brenda's son who also has a son, a baby, wants nothing more than to play piano all day. The daughter dresses in trendy teenage garb and seems to repeatedly run off with anything with two legs and pants. Debbie, the tatoo artist, seems like an S&M freak, and eventually leaves because "there is too much harmony." The thing I love about this film is that most all of the characters change. Jasmin's unfolding is glorious. The themes in the movie of racial misunderstanding and harmony are also interesting. Jasmin has never seen blacks and pictures herself in tribal Africa being roasted for dinner. She's amazed at how light the palms of Brenda's daughter's hand is, a simple detail but beautiful in its innocent sense of wonder. The DVD version doesn't add a tremendous amount of extras such as bonus material, but the movie itself is the reward. If you like upbeat films somewhat off the beaten track, seek out this cinematic gem.
Movie Review: Two worlds collide
Summary: 5 Stars
BAGDAD CAFE is a wonderful example of how two very disparate people from different worlds can find harmony together and produce magic from their union.Jasmin, played by Marianne Sagebrecht, is a staunch, uptight German tourist who is abandoned by her equally staunch, uptight German husband in the middle of the Mojave desert. With no possessions to her name except a suitcase of men's personal articles and a thermos of very strong coffee, she wanders aimless through the desert and happens upon the Bagdad Cafe and Motel, a dilapidated motel/cafe/gas station frequented only by an eclectic cast of locals and the odd trucker or two.The Bagdad is owned an operated by Brenda, played by CCH Pounder, an irascible African-American woman who is stressed and overwhelmed at turns by the responsibility of running the Bagdad. When Jasmin comes for an indefinite stay, Brenda chafes at this odd foreign woman who seems to have come from nowhere. The tension is increased when Brenda notes the unusual objects in Jasmin's suitcase, one of which happens to be a magic kit which, later in the movie, literally and figuratively brings magic to Bagdad.The women come to realize that though each is from a different world, they share common bonds: each has an apatheic, uncaring husband who has been cast aside, and each is struggling to find a niche in a seemingly uncaring world. When they join forces, they transform the Bagdad from a dismal, lethargic desert outpost to a sparkling, enchanted oasis. The music is excellent! I loved the haunting theme song and that enchanting piano melody (I think it's Bach?) the young boy pianist constantly played.Movie Review: (4.5 STARS) Bagdad Cafe Is Calling You: Unique and Charming
Summary: 5 Stars
If you are looking for something unique, here it is. "Out of Rosenheim" (also known as "Bagdad Cafe) may not be the most famous film in the world, but the visuals and the music (with the amazing melody of "Calling You") will stay with you forever.
The story follows Jasmin Münchgstettner (Marianne Sägebrecht), a traveler from Rosenheim, Germany. Jasmin has just left her husband on the desert road, and as if led by fate, she decides to stay at the seedy motel (next to a gas station and a café) in the middle of nowhere, which a bossy, always angry and yelling owner Brenda (CCH Pounder) runs. With the arrival of this unexpected guest, however, the sleepy place and the life of the people there change forever.
German-born director Percy Adlon has an oddball sense of humor that is endearing to some, but perplexing to others. Jasmin's husband drops in the café and drinks a cup of coffee. He praises the taste, but the coffee is actually made by his wife he has just left. Or listen to what Jasmin says at the very end of the film. Percy Adlon cleverly subverts our expectations as he did in "Sugarbaby" (starring Marianne Sägebrecht).
The film is not to everybody's taste, admittedly. It depends on which version you see (I saw the longer German version), but some part of the film is slow-moving, and some part is a bit too self-conscious (one character leaves the café behind, saying "Too much harmony" as if directed at audiences). Still "Out of Rosenheim" is a very charming film and the theme song "Calling You" is unforgettable.
Movie Review: the Magical German Woman
Summary: 5 Stars
A german woman gets stranded in the middle of Mojave Desert and finds refuge in a small cafe motel establishment, run by a very overpowering black woman who has just chased off her husband and left basically alone with minimal cafe staff, along with the desert locals and her kids. Brenda, the black woman motel owner, has an extremely domineering personality, and a crushed spirit. The german woman, Jasmine, brought to the Bagdad Cafe by a desert freeway illusion, is soon to become Brenda's key to a brighter life. Her foreign embrace of this smalltown American out of nowhere community, is the tune that brings new life to just about everyone she meets. The music soundtrack to this movie could not be more appropriate, in opening credits to the jumpy piano score.
Jasmine, has brought a hobby to the cafe, in a magic box set with instructions to entertain and amuse in the world of illusion. This hobby soon registers with the truck drivers who have bypassed the cafe before, but are willing to stop for a breath of magic. The cafe soon becomes a crowd pleaser with many regulars, and is easily transformed back to the prior doldrums, when Jasmine is forced to leave after investigation of an expired green card. However, this does not keep the magical heroine away for long, as she is soon back to reunite with the now changed Brenda.
This movie packs an emotional punch with the battered beast in all of us, who must learn to survive in a world of spiritual magic, if our wellbeing is to thrive.
Movie Review: What makes a woman yell at a man that hates women who yell at him.
Summary: 5 Stars
It's an amazing movie, about many different aspects of life. But what I noticed was the double bind between the owner of the cafe and her husband. He didn't do 'nothin' so his wife yelled because somebody in the family has to do 'somethin'. She wept after he left, just before Jasmin the German lady limped into her life. And she's just left her German louse of a husband who had irritated her so much that she'd rather hitchhike than be in the same car with him.
The two men seemed to want to keep track of their mate, but not enough to address their 'issues': apparent lazienss and extreme sensitivity to his 'manhood' in one. But boorishness, and 'non-involvement' with their wives in both. Jasmin isn't the kind of lady that can ignore something that needs cleaning up, fixing up, so she goes to work, cleaning up, and getting order out of chaos. They evolve into women who can do something themselves,
The scenes that showed the two twists (I think they are 'moebius twists', a ribbon twisted a half turn) that appearred in the sky and in pictures on the wall of Jasmin's room was a true mystical encounter to me.
The music was haunting as long as it wasn't the clamoring of the son, who seemed equally non-involved with his mother's harsh living conditions. That made the screeching excusable. I wondered why men do what causes women to do what they hate most.
I loved the Jack Palance, he was really into the character. It's a classic movie.