The bitterness of the playwright's vision is expanded by the director's fascinated fondness for American culture
Don't Come Knocking (2006)
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Reviews Counted:99
Fresh:42
Rotten:57
Average Rating:5.4/10
Consensus: The cinematography conjures beautifully evocative landscapes, but aside from that, the film is meandering and pointless.
Theatrical Release:Mar 17, 2006 Limited
Box Office: $345,961
Synopsis: When he was younger he was a movie star, mostly in Westerns. At the age of sixty, Howard uses drugs, alcohol and young girls to avoid the painful truth that there are only supporting roles left for... When he was younger he was a movie star, mostly in Westerns. At the age of sixty, Howard uses drugs, alcohol and young girls to avoid the painful truth that there are only supporting roles left for him to play. After yet another night of debauchery in his trailer, Howard awakens in disgust to find that he is still alive, but that nobody in the world would have missed him if he had died. Howard gallops away on his movie horse in full cowboy regalia; fleeing from the film and his life. At an old train station, Howard trades in his costume for the shabby clothes of an old ranch hand (James Gammon) and travels to Elko, Nevada, the place that he ran away from years before and where his 80 year-old mother (Eva Marie Saint) still lives. Mom takes him in and treats him as if he were still a boy. Perhaps Mom realizes that Howard is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Meanwhile, the film shoot that Howard has abandoned is in chaos over his absence. The insurance company hires a private detective, Sutter (Tim Roth), to find Howard. Mom tells Howard that more than twenty years ago a young woman called her up trying to locate Howard. Mom figured that the girl was pregnant. Howard is shocked at the thought that he has a grown child somewhere. This child could be a ray of hope, a possible salvation from his narcissistic and meaningless life. When Sutter appears in Elko, reminding Howard of the reality he has escaped from, he flees again, this time to find his child. His destination is Butte, Montana, the location twenty-five years earlier where Howard shot the movie that made him a star. It was also where he had an affair with Doreen (Jessica Lange) who then, and now, is the waitress at the local coffee shop. She has a son, Earl (Gabriel Mann), a rock musician and singer living in Butte with his girlfriend Amber (Fairuza Balk). Howard's meeting with Earl is violent and unsettling. Earl completely rejects this unknown father who appears too late in his life. Saddened by this encounter, Howard is ready to give up and leave Butte again, when out of nowhere a young woman named Sky (Sarah Polley) appears. She is exactly the same age as Earl. She is, in fact, Howard's child, the product of another short fling that happened during the filming of the same movie. She is Earl's half-sister. These siblings do not know about each other. That's when the real complications of this American family reunion begin... --© Sony Pictures Classics [More]
Starring: Sam Shepard, Jessica Lange, Tim Roth, Gabriel Mann
Starring: Sam Shepard, Jessica Lange, Tim Roth, Gabriel Mann, Fairuza Balk, Sarah Polley, Eva Marie Saint, Mike Butters, James Gammon, Marley Shelton, Julia Sweeney, Tom Farrell, Kurt Fuller, Majandra Del Fino, Marieh Delfino
Director: Wim Wenders
Director: Wim Wenders
Screenwriter: Sam Shepard
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
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Reviews for Don't Come Knocking
Apart from an extraordinary scene of attempted reconciliation between Shepard and Lange "Don't Come Knocking" is an inflated drama that lies stagnate on the screen.
hardly Wenders' most adventurous feature, although perhaps his bravest, dramatising not only the director's undoubted influence on the last 20 years of indie cinema, but also his increasing redundancy within it.
[It has] a terrific sense of place, something missing from much contemporary US cinema.
Wim Wenders y Sam Shepard (Paris, Texas) recuperan (en excelente fotografía y mejor música) una iconografía norteamericana al servicio de una historia sobre el desarraigo y la necesidad de recuperar vínculos largamente perdidos.
The widescreen visual poetry of "Don't Come Knocking" seems less like inspiration and more like overcompensation.
The story, jointly cooked up, is reasonable, if not their best, but Shepard's screenplay is a real disappointment, failing to lock into gear at any time.
By the time we get to the point where the camera is endlessly circling Shepard sitting on a sofa in the middle of the street, it feels as if he and his director were making things up as they went along.
...the long-awaited reunion of writer-actor Sam Shepard and German filmmaker Wim Wenders yields only mixed results.
Emotionally arid and narratively lazy, the film is so tentative it seems to be evaporating before our very eyes.
Potential filmgoers should read the title carefully. Then take the message heart.
Aspires to be a story of redemption and discovery, but it's too undercooked to be either.
The charm here is in watching Shepard and Lange, and Shepard and Saint play off one another, and the leisurely pace of the 'discoveries' that aren't really secrets in the first place.
... the story ... isn't big enough to stand up to the characters who blow through it or to resist being overwhelmed by the geography on which it's set.
A sparse, rolling drama with some strong laughs that prods at a western movie star's surprising past.
Latest News for Don't Come Knocking
March 09, 2006:
South By Southwest Festival Starts Friday
The annual South by Southwest film and music festival kicks off on Friday. Held in Austin, TX, SXSW will showcase 150 feature films and 130 shorts, including the regional... More...
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