Touches You

So much average

Simply Perfect

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I don't really know Wim Wenders work other than Paris Texas, so had no expectations, but I found this film a real gem. The characters are wonderful. The performances (particularly Eva Marie Saint and Jessica Lange) are amazing. The whole thing looks fantastic, and the music is perfectly judged. I read it described as a film about a man who tries to reconcile with his past - and somehow the film manages to fit in 5 or 6 complex relationships so well that you get really transported to his/their world. Jessica Lange has a scene that is one of the best scenes I have ever seen. (actually she has several, but you'll know which). Initially I wasn't sure if Sam Shephard's character showed enough charisma for you to believe his life as the lovable rogue, but everything else is so good I'm thinking I might have got that wrong - perhaps at this point in his life where he is full of guilt it would have taken away from the story if he was still a charmer. Strangely the copy I bought on Amazon was only about 1hr45 which shows less than show on IMDb, but I didn't feel I had missed anything. Perhaps it was cut after theatrical release for the better because I can't really understand why the film I watched wasn't a huge success, I loved it.

"Don't Come Knocking" is the incredibly boring story of a washed up cowboy movie actor's attempt to escape from the role he plays in real life. Unfortunately, we the audience are taken along on his mundane quest to nowhere. Solid production quality does nothing to help this humorless, dreary odyssey. The acting is good, but the drama is forced and the lines are often downright silly. Tim Roth's performance as the eccentric bounty hunter sent to retrieve the AWOL actor is simply weird, even by his standards. I was unable to care about any character in the movie - not a single one! In the end, I was hoping an asteroid would suddenly appear and strike Butte Montana, killing all the characters there. That, would have be the best way to end this pretentious movie.

When people look back on the first decade of this century, this film will be seen to be one of the great films of that period. The partnership of Wim Wenders and Sam Shepard is simply unbeatable for creating major works of cinematic art. Shepard's bizarre ability to come up with deeply emotive but unique stories and characters, and Wender's unmatched cinematic genius generate hyper-classics. This is this decade's 'Paris, Texas', and is just as haunting, just as evocative, and rips our solar plexus out with the same relentless fury. Add to this the magnificent cinematography and, as usual, the wonderful music, and you have something in its own class, - the Wenders Class! The film is full of spectacular performances of such sensitivity and intensity that one wonders if human beings are really capable of feeling that much. Does this film flatter us into imagining that anything could ever really matter that much to us that we would behave as these people do? This film is all about feeling so deeply that the air is a mile above you. Sam Shepard dominates with a career-topping performance as Howard Spence, a hopelessly self-destructive cowboy movie star who finally starts thinking maybe other people exist after all. Jessica Lange gives one of the best and most versatile performances of her life as an old flame to whom he 'kind of returns' and insults by saying 20 years too late that they should have married. Gabriel Mann not only sings well, but gives a deeply moving performance as a troubled son left behind and cracking up. Fairuza Balk is superb as his wonderfully anarchic girl friend who bops on a broken sofa with the spontaneity of a puppy. As for Sarah Polley, in a way she makes the film. I wouldn't want to run into her on the street, because she might throw a Molotov cocktail at me, but as a gentle, wistful, thoughtful abandoned daughter she provides the sombre bass note to the whole orchestration, and her speech near the end mesmerises not only all the characters but us too, and rounds everything off sublimely. This is so beautifully orchestrated, it is better than Toscanini. And Eva Marie Saint! My God! There she is again after all these years! And she is wonderful as Sam Shepard's mother, who has learned to let it all flow by. She will gladly offer him orange juice and cookies and make up his bed with his high school pennants put up on the wall to welcome him, after a mere 20 years' absence, but she will not get too upset about him again, knowing he will be off tomorrow. A lesson in resignation! Tim Roth is so controlled, neurotic, and super-cool as a determined film guarantor trying to save 32.5 million dollars on a budget payout. One doesn't want him to succeed. Can't he leave poor old Howard alone? Can't the world leave Howard alone? Can't Howard have that cocktail he lusts after? But no, that's just what alcoholics can't have. Nor can they have the girls they left behind. But maybe they can find their children. Once again, the Wenders motif of the lost child whose recovery heals a loss, redemption by progeny. Is Wenders himself a waif? A little boy lost? Wherever it comes from, this elemental call of the blood, the miracle of the child, and the intervention (whether seen or unseen) of the angel, is the essence of Wenders and is what speaks to us, as the invisible closes in, miraculously revealed to us in the sense of place, in the great ear of the void into which we (and Tim Roth in this film) shout with futile desperation: 'Hello!' But the desert answers us in its own way, not in our voice, but in our fates. We are all on paths towards each other, away from each other, going somewhere, going nowhere, but going. The 'road movie' is that thing called Life. If we scream loud enough, eventually the reply comes in our strange destinies which are shaped by the cry.

First of all: I'm a big Wim Wenders admiror. For so far I've seen almost all of his movies and to me he is truly one of the BIG directors of his generation. Together with R.W.Fassbinder, Volker Schlöndorf and Werner Herzog he shaped post-war German cinema and renewed it's status and quality it had lost since the early 20th century (Fritz Lang, Murnau,...). I will always remember Wenders as the director who gave me "Der Himmel über Berlin", "Der Amerikanische freund" and "Paris, Texas". These films are all included in my personal top20 and I count them among the best films of the second half of the 20th century. Unfortunately, Wenders left Europe to live his "American dream", which in my opinion gave him only less inspiration and authenticity. While his German productions were truly original, well directed pieces of visual art with stunning cinematography, I have not seen a single of his US-releases that left me in awe (I need to point out here that "Paris-Texas" was a German production). Although I liked "The end of violence", most of his US releases from the last years were bad. "The million dollar hotel" had a thin story, "Land of plenty" was just poor and so is this "Don't come knocking". Although the soundtrack is good (which is almost always the case in a Wenders film) the cinematography was rather disappointing, the dialogue unnatural, the acting rather bad and the story just to cheesy. The film s not bad in his own right, but having seen Wenders'other films, I can't help comparing. From the brilliance of his early black and white masterpieces (Im lauf der zeit!!!) to this rather melodramatic soap-opera, is a steep way down...I can only hope Wenders will see this for himself and take some time for reflection. Maybe coming back to Europe would help? I don't know, but what I do know is that Wenders can do better than that, and he has proved it many times...