PodBill Just what I expected

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Console best movie i've ever seen.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

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.

whpratt1 This film starts out with Howard Spence, (Sam Shepard) who walks off the set of a Western he was starring in and no one can seem to find him which will cause a great deal of problems for the director and producer. Howard decides to visit his mother after not seeing her for 30 years, Eva Marie Saint plays the role as his mom and gave an outstanding performance. After visiting with his mother she tells Howard that he had a son from a women who came looking for him years ago and this puts an idea in Howard's head to visit the town where she lives. Howard seems to go around in circles with a young girl who follows him everywhere he goes and she carries an urn with her mother's ashes. There is one scene where Howard just sits on a couch which has been thrown out in the street for almost 24 hours while the camera views him for a long long time. The reason this film is depressing is the fact that Howard has abandoned his son and wife and he has to face his past sins and mistakes. The moral of this story is simply, "What you Reap, You Sow". Strange film, but down to earth.

Kahuna-6 If you need a movie to show the absurdities of life, then "Don't Come Knocking" will be the perfect choice. Right off the bat, we have a proposition - the ultimate icon of male virility, a big, strong cowboy, running away. He is not escaping hardship. He is leaving a movie shoot filled with creature comfort, sex and all the drugs he can use. In his first act of atonement (or is it castration?), he gave up his horse, boots and even his spurs. Then he walked in his socks out into the desert.Surely a man suffering a mid-to-late life crisis should deserve some sympathy? But Sam Shepard, who co-wrote the script, didn't cut him any slack. In fact he had done such a good job playing this character, it is strange he wasn't even considered for an Oscar.So he went for a little walkabout in the wilderness. Did he have any vision? From the back of a bus, he saw a man in an electric blue suit wandering along the highway carrying a set of golf clubs.He decided to go home to mum; except for a little inconvenience of not having even called his mother for the last 30 years. In another piece of excellent casting, we see Eva Marie Saint as the forgiving mother. Of course, this is a Wim Wenders movie and mum isn't always as sweet as apple pie.Now in the sanctuary of his mother's home, our cowboy looked back at the follies of his life. The director arranged this in the form of a scrapbook of tabloid's clippings. We are left wondering like the hero on what is true and what is not.But the ranch he had known as a boy is no more. Instead, his hometown had been turned into a frontier casino. He didn't even recognize someone who claimed to be his high school classmate. Disillusioned, our hero fell again. In his movie, he would have ridden off or die in a hail of bullets "Just Like Jesse James". But he was ignominiously arrested and sent home like an errant teenager.In the midst of sorting out what left of his life, his mother let on that he may have had a son out of a movie set fling. Off he went in search.And hot on his heel is a bondsman who had underwritten the movie. The Hollywood template would be a tough muscle man in an action packed chase. Nope, we have Tim Roth in yet another brilliant performance. Just like our hero, our bondsman is a loner. While he may be comfortable in his own cocoon filling out crossword puzzles, he does make feeble attempt to connect. He just yelled out loud into the desert asking if anybody is out there.Into the last third, we have all the players coming in for the showdown.Kiss and make up? Got two. One, in front of a gym with guys on their exercise bikes looking on. The other, a hilarious swipe at the classic screen finale.Gunplay? Yeah, a single shot. In a scene that starts off with a wonderful time lapsed photography of a car in a deserted parking lot, the usual cowboy / Indian drama is inverted onto its head.Don't watch this movie if you can't afford to have it haunting you. It is like a Zen koan, it will just keep buzzing around your brain. Don't believe me, I'm writing this at 5 in the morning.

buiger Steve Rhodes summed it up perfectly in his review: "Beautifully shot but a colossal bore..."Wim Wenders has lost it! He seems to be the only one left (along with a couple more Europeans) who still believes that all that he does is art. I heard a couple of interviews he made for German TV about the movie and his opinion of the US and it's policies recently. Instead of traveling around the world denigrating a country in which he lives and which has given him everything, he should concentrate on his film-making instead, and then maybe this would have been a better film. Why don't artists ever stick to what they know best and leave politics to responsible people?Anyway, coming back to the movie, there isn't really much to say; I will have to cite Steve Rhodes' review again: "The only thing good about 'Don't come knocking' is that Franz Lustig's cinematography will knock your socks off...", but that alone is nowhere near enough for a movie to even be watchable, let alone good.