Wordiezett So much average

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Megamind To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

mark.waltz This is a family reunion I want no part of in this Lifetime TV style my vie, released in theaters, and not welcome to darken my DVD player after this viewing. Sam Shepherd is a troubled western movie actor (they still exist?) who finds out from his aging mother (Eva Marie Saint) that he has a grown son in a small town where he once shot a movie. He ventures there where he finds an equally messed up son (Gabriel Mann) along with the beautiful woman (Jessica Lange) he basically forgot about after finishing up the film. Nice guy, aye? Real all American hero, this one, yet still able to find work, that is when he shows up sober to work. Unpleasant in every way, this is a story we've seen thousands of times, decently acted but soapy and unbelievable. I really didn't care about seeing a reunion between the two, and when it happens, the only one I felt any compassion for is the beautiful Lange. I don't believe that she'd stay single for long here, although with Mann, seeing his harpy mess of a floozy girlfriend would drive me to throw an entire apartment out of a window, too. Yes, people with emotionally empty lives exist, but their stories don't make appealing movies. A scene where Lange has to explain how hash browns are made is an insult to her talent.

robert-temple-1 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.

mehdimarechal 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...

loracbau I found this movie to be a reflection of the West, the Great American West. Don't Come Knocking is a 360 degree look at the cowboy icon. Especially the Hollywood Cowboy icon, which of course is quite different from what was any real cowboy who ever existed in the 'old' West. This movie pays homage to the western while also being an anti-Western, or un- Western. Maybe so many people love the clichéd mythos of the west they cannot look at reality, but this movie shows the reality. Howard Spence is an alcoholic womanizer, who is a movie star cowboy. Does he actually embody rugged individualism that is so broadly displayed in the the Western Themes, or is it really just an act he has clinged to all his life? And what is left if he realizes it's all been an act? The reality of a real cowboy is the man he finds in his escape from a movie set, a guy living in a shack. We find out that Howard is not a likable man, he doesn't call his mother, and has never really cared for or about anyone other than himself. This is the cowboy story, the aspects of the story no one wants to think about, or care about. The old girlfriend he abandoned long ago sees through him. Howard Spence personifies the West, a loner, miserable who hasn't seen his mother in 30 years, and has to come to terms with his indiscretions at some point when he discovers he has a son he never knew about. This movie has some homage to the great westerns, not only those from the 40s and 50s, but also Clint Eastwood, as so clearly referenced in the movie poster in the restaurant where ___ works. He's such a 'great hero' that we all love, the loner-savior cowboy who can't seem to have any lasting relationships with women. What is wrong with him? What is so great about him? That is what his son asks him, when he comes knocking after so many years of nothing.