Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with another pair of reviews from Grib in Park City. He's got his opinion on Wim Wenders and Sam Shepard's DON'T COME KNOCKING and a flick called FLANNEL PAJAMAS! Enjoy!
Hey, Harry,
Grib here with a review of Wim Wenders' "Don't Come Knocking," written by and starring Sam Shepard. I was looking forward to last night's premiere, but there was a small seed of doubt in the back of my mind. Why? Because this collaboration between Wenders and Shepard, their first since 1984's "Paris, Texas," which won the Palm D'Or at Cannes, debuted at Cannes last May and didn't win anything. My guess is that the jury at the French festival would bend over backward to throw another prize at this legendary pair, so it was not a good sign that they came away empty-handed. My fears, as it turns out, were justified: this is a stinker of a film. Really, these guys can do better. Much better. First, the good stuff: it is beautiful to look at. No one captures the look and feel of the American West better than Wenders (a German-Canadian, go figure), and this film was shot on location in Butte, Montana and in a rather desolate section of Utah. The bad stuff: everything else.
There are some plot holes you could drive a truck through; this would perhaps be pardonable from a recent film school grad whose first film snuck into the festival, but from a Pulitzer-prize winning playwright whose film is debuting in North America in front of 1200 people, I expected a lot more. Here is the plot, such as it is: Shepard plays Howard, an aging Western star whose tabloid career is outpacing his film work due to his boozing and carousing. One day, he's had enough and he rides off the set of his latest film and disappears, much to the consternation of his director (the ageless George Kennedy) and the finance people, who face the loss of their completion bond. The studio folks dispatch a mysterious man in a suit (played bizarrely but entertainingly by Tim Roth) to track Howard down.
Howard, meanwhile, is on the bus to see his mom (Eva Marie Saint---wonderful to see her) for the first time in 30 years. She lives on a hill overlooking Elko, Nevada. Their scenes have a sort of "Blue Velvet" feel; the town has an eerie quality and the people seem just a bit off. Howard's mom mysteriously goes off to bed (complete with "Good night, Howard") when they get home from the bus station, even though it's clearly still broad daylight. She also seems to be a little too nonchalant about Howard's visit, seeing as how he's been gone for 30 years.
Howard's mom tells him that a while back, she heard from a woman claiming to be the mother of his son. This is news to Howard, who decides to return to Butte, Montana, the place where he made one of his biggest Westerns twenty years earlier, and where he met the woman who contacted his mother. Once in Butte, Howard goes to a restaurant/bar with pictures all over the walls from the filming of his movie, which was apparently the only thing that ever happened in Butte. There's also a picture on the wall of him with a very attractive young woman (Jessica Lange, 20 years ago---their family album came in handy here!), who, it turns out, is named Doreen. She now runs this establishment, which keeps its money in a safe the size of Fort Knox.
Meanwhile, a young woman named Sky (the wonderful Sarah Polley) is wandering around Butte carrying her recently-departed mother's ashes in an urn. She spots Howard at Doreen's restaurant and recognizes him as someone who once had a fling with her mom; it appears that Howard has more than one surprise child in Butte.
Howard eventually confronts Doreen, who is less than pleased to see him. They have a couple of nicely-written exchanges, but they have no emotional impact, because no meaningful foundation has been laid for them. We meet Howard's son, Earl, a local lounge singer played by Gabriel Mann, who plays the part as if he's auditioning for WWF Raw. His performance is so overdone that I began to cringe every time he appeared in the frame. Fairuza Balk plays Earl's bizarrely-behaved girlfriend, screaming her lines and generally acting like an alien. These may be the two weakest characters Shepard has ever written.
Here's an example of a plot problem: Earl, who has spent a great deal of time dining and performing in his mom's restaurant, which is adorned with nothing but pictures of Howard, does not recognize Howard as a movie actor or as someone who might be his father (despite that picture of Earl's mom gazing lovingly at Howard, which hangs prominently on the wall at the restaurant). This is but one of many things that the viewer must overlook in order for this film to make sense.
The film lurches to a pointless conclusion, with only Roth and the scenery providing any relief. Avoid this one at all costs. Watch "Paris, Texas" again instead to see what these guys were doing back when they were still trying.
FLANNEL PAJAMAS
I've seen 14 movies since Friday night. I just emerged from "Flannel Pajamas," starring Justin Kirk (the brother from Showtime's "Weeds") and one of my favorite unknown actresses, Julianne Nicholson ("Tully"). I really liked the first third of this movie; maybe even the first half. Then it became an experience that I can only describe as eating an entree at a restaurant that starts out like the most delicious thing you've ever had. When it first hits your palate, you have to have more and more and more. Then you realize that there's one ingredient that just doesn't taste good, and it sort of spoils the rest of the meal. If the chef had just left out that one damned ingredient, it would have been perfect.
"Flannel Pajamas" is just too damned long. I was waiting patiently for it to end for about an hour. It felt like longer. There are scenes, just like that imperfect ingredient, that could be jettisoned and the film would leap in my estimation. It tells the story of Stuart and Nicole, who are introduced on a blind date by a woman ("Law & Order SVU"'s Stephanie March) of whom they are both therapy patients. Curiously, in a movie that includes everything else it possibly could, nothing is done with this odd plot point. Neither Stuart nor Nicole ever goes back to this therapist, at least not onscreen, and no mention is made of any visits.
We follow the couple through their courtship, their wedding, their quarrels over whether or not to get a dog or to have children, Christmas in Montana with Nicole's huge family, a funeral in Stuart's family, and on and on and on. And on. I really don't dislike this film, though. The performances are good throughout, and there are a couple of scenes (especially one near the film's merciful end between Nicole's mother and Stuart) that are among the best written and acted I've ever seen. But by the time the film passes the two-hour mark, the audience has been through so many different emotional wringers that a numbness has long since set in. I found myself pleading silently for some sort of resolution between the two principal characters so that I could get away from their world. Some of this has to do with the fact that the film mirrored some of the problems that led my own marriage off the tracks, but, setting any personal influences aside, this film needs some heavy editing. Ninety minutes with these people would be plenty. 125-plus is way too much.
