Don't Come Knocking
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Movie Reviews of Don't Come Knocking
Movie Review: Keep On "Knocking"
Summary: 4 Stars
"Don't Come Knocking" was something of an unexpected treat for me. I remember when the film opened in Chicago, and the awful reviews it got and the lack of public support, but I wanted to see it anyway. And before you knew it, it was out of theatres.
It's been a strage year for movies. I've found many times I'm on the outside of public opinion. I actually liked "All the King's Men" and I even liked "The Black Dahlia". I'm just not influenced by public opinion. I like what I like and the masses aren't going to change my mind.
"Don't Come Knocking" is the kind of film I love to watch. It's a self-discovery road picture. Going back to Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries", "The Browning Version" and even the more recent "About Schmidt" these kinds of films appeal to me.
The reason is because I find the topic universal. We all have regrets in our lives. We all wish at times that we can go back in time and rectify past situations. Now with some wisdom on our side perhaps we would respond to problems differently.
In "Don't Come Knocking" Howard Spence (Sam Shepard) is going through such a moment in his life. He was once a famous actor in westerns who is now a washed up has-been who gets by on memories of the past.
While on the set of his lastest film, a truly corny cliche western film, where characters kiss and then ride off into the sunset (!), Howard decides to pick up and leave. He sneaks off the set and makes his way back home.
Howard decides to go visit his mother (Eva Marie Saint) whom he hasn't seen for thirty years. It is there he learns he has a child. From who he doesn't know. How old the child is, he also doesn't know. His mother just casually blurted it out.
So from one family reunion to another Howard sets out to find the family he never knew about.
It turns out the woman was Doreen (Jessica Lange) and they had a son, Earl (Gabriel Mann). But there's also a stranger (Sarah Polley) who has come to town to find a resting place for her mother's ashes.
The film was directed by Wim Wenders and written by Sam Shepard. The two worked together on "Paris, Texas" and many see this film as a sequel. Because of that, most critics damned the movie because it wasn't "Paris, Texas".
I'm actually not very familar with Wenders' work. I've only seen "The End of Violence", "Buena Vista Social Club" and "Beyond the Clouds" (he co-directed the film with the great Antonioni). Wenders though is probably best known for the film "Wings of Desire" with was remade as "City of Angels" with Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan.
But perhaps my youth and inexperience in Wenders work is what saved me. I can't compare the film to his others. I didn't walk in with high expectations. I let the story move at its own pace and carry me along. Because of this the film managed to catch me off guard and really speak to me. It's one of the best films of 2006 and no one saw it.
Bottom-line: This Wim Wenders film is one of the best of the year! A wonderful journey look at how if we are given a second chance in life we can correct our mistakes.
Movie Review: Caught between Earth and Sky
Summary: 4 Stars
"Don't Come Knocking" tells the story of a 60-year-old B-Western film star (Sam Shepard) who is sick of a meaningless carnal existence, which is highlighted by almost continuous indulgence in booze, babes and brawls. While on a film set in Utah he seems to say "F*** it all!" jumps on a horse and flees, searching for something. What? Something deeper than what he knows and definitely a stronger reason to exist. He soon learns he has a son he never knew about from a fling over 20 years before. So he goes to Butte, Montana, where he gets reaquainted with his ex-girlfriend (Jessica Lange) and meets both a son (Gabriel Mann) and daughter (Sarah Polley). But this is hardly a warm reunion, hence the title "Don't Come Knocking." Meanwhile the film company sends an eccentric bounty hunter (Tim Roth) to fetch Shepard for breach of contract.
The film is highlighted by magnificent Western locations and a nice modern Country/Western/Rockish score (non-twangy).
Although this is generally a quiet drama, it has a hip and likable artistic flair.
We can all relate to Shepard's search on some level; hence, despite the film's slow drama it easily maintains the viewer's attention throughout its 1 hour 50 minute runtime, unless you grew up on MTV and "Armageddon," of course.
Anyway, Shepard's two kids in the film, Earl and Sky, represent two extremes. Earl's name is fitting because he's full of volcanic rage that spits out from deep within the Earth (Earl/Earth, get it?). Sky, on the other hand, is completely spiritual in nature (hence, sky/heaven). She's full of warmth, love, compassion and forgiveness. In fact, she's the crucial Christ figure without which there would be little reconciliation for anyone in the story.
Take note of the scene where Sky meets her father in his hotel room. Sky just looks at her dad with the understanding eyes of divine love. This naturally makes Shepard uncomfortable; he's never experienced this before. He doesn't know what to do, so he asks her to leave.
On a side note, Jessica Lange still looks good for being in her mid-50s but I found her character strange and annoying.
Also, Earl's girlfriend is an interesting freespirit who looks like Steven Tyler if he was younger and female.
CONCLUSION: For all the reasons above "Don't Come Knocking" is a fine film worthy of repeat viewings, that is, if it sounds like your cup of java.
PERSONAL GRADE: Borderline B+ or A-
Movie Review: a Mid-Life, Coming of Age Tale
Summary: 4 Stars
Well, I just watched it, and was quite taken with it as a whole. The comments about scenery, cinematography, settings eating up the screen and being as interesting, if not more so, than the other characters, is on the money. Have to agree, to a degree. The visuals were as vivid and stark as an Edward Hopper painting. That aspect was glorious. But, so were the characters, in my opnion. And, if anything, boredom or tedium was not a part of my experience. It was, not surprisingly, like a play. It had it's acts and it's own slower pace, much the same as the main character himself, Sam Shepard's, Howard Spence. Howard was a longtime in waking up to the demons that haunted him and kept him settling for less as a leading man in C class western movies. It took him 20 some years to get around to owning up to a son that he either didn't know about, or drank away the memory of being told of. Whether he is after his own redemption, or working out his guilt, as Jessica Lange's character claims, or just trying to end the running from himself, this is a middle aged man, coming of age. As dysfunctional as it is, it is also quite real. After fleeing a movie set in mid-shoot, Howard heads home to see his own mother (Eva Marie Saint) where he is confronted at a sober moment, with the fact that he has a son up in Montana. Heading out in search of who and what he really is, Howard is plagued by his actions and non-actions of the past and present. Tim Roth, as a bondsman hired by the movie studios insurance company, is in dogged pursuit of the 'in breach of contract' washed up actor. Spence encounters the woman (Lange) and mother to his son, and she leads him to the bar where the off-spring, Earl, (Gabriel Mann) is fronting a band that is a twisted country version of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, with his whacked girlfriend, Amber, (Fairuza Balk) pumping away on the harmonium. Meanwhile, Sky (Sarah Polley) yet another long lost love child of the rather busy actor lurks in shadows, carrying her mom's ashes with her throughout the story. All converge with the emotional subtlety of an internal supernova. Yep, little external action. Car chases are there, kinda, but it's no Bullit. But man, I was hooked on the dialogue, the look and feel of the film, the music by T Bone Burnett and the reality of knowing sooner or later we have to own up to who we are, like it or not. I loved the film.Movie Review: Related . . .
Summary: 4 Stars
This movie is for Wim Wenders fans and a little less so for moviegoers who love breath-taking images of the American West, with an ironic sense of how the real- and movie-West often contradict each other. Most of the film's themes come together in the character of Howard Spence (Sam Shepard), a man from a ranch in Nevada who's also had a career as a cowboy movie star. His playboy carelessness (drugs, alcohol, affairs, children he's fathered and doesn't know of) is a match for the reckless abuse of the land itself, the John Ford-like setting of southern Utah where his current movie is being shot contrasting with the unreal glitter of gambling casinos in Elko and the devastated city of Butte, where the vast open pit of what was once the Anaconda copper mine is now filling with toxic ground water.
For viewers a little puzzled by this rather loosely constructed and long-winded film, the DVD commentary by Wenders is a richly informative discussion of his intentions with the film along with anecdotes about making it (scenes created on the spot, the influence of painter Edward Hopper, also the story behind the final image of the film). Wenders' explanation of how he and Shepard wrote the film together and made it over a period of five years do much to account for its somewhat rambling structure.
The performances by the seasoned actors are great, including Jessica Lange (who would have remained far more beautiful and expressive without a facelift) flying into an unexpected rage in her last scene with a stunned Shepard and actually dislocating her shoulder as she hits him with a big handbag. However, it was harder for this viewer to wax as enthusiastic as Wenders about his younger actors, who seemed often vague about who and what they were supposed to be.
Shepard's usual themes are here - about family relationships and the dislocations between fathers and their children. The theatricality of his imagination comes through in long monologues and a funeral urn as an unfortunate stage prop. But Sam himself is wonderful to watch in this his own creation, and you hang on to the end waiting for the illumination that his playwright's mind is seeking in its journey across interior and exterior landscapes.
Movie Review: Where is Howard?
Summary: 4 Stars
Wim Wenders returns with his used style; the search of the affective and emotional roots. As he showed us in Paris Texas, the first shot invites us to think in huge but desolate landscapes.
Howard Spence (Sam Sheppard) is an actor who has lost his well known admiration, he is now at his fifties and is shooting a film in Utah. Suddenly he flees for some inner reason and so decides to visit his mother (Eva Marie Saint) after more than thirty long years ; after a brief stage she reveals him about a secret, he has a son, outcome of a youth's sin. Doreen is the mother (Jessica Lange) and lives in Montana.
That will be essentially the basic dramatic premise for this complex and tender film with adorable touches of American humour, country music and poetic desolation.
As it's usually in most of Wenders films this is another road-movie with profound emotional implications.
Another jewel in the crown of this master filmmaker.