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DVD Paris, Texas
Something like a perfect artistic union is achieved in the major components of Paris, Texas: the twang of Ry Cooder's guitar, the lonely light of Robbie Muller's camera, the craggy landscape of Harry Dean Stanton's face. In his greatest role, longtime character actor Stanton plays a man brought back to his old life after wandering in the desert (or somewhere) for four years. He has a 7-year-old son to get to know, and his wife has gone missing. The material is much in the wanderlust spirit of director Wim Wenders, working from a script by Sam Shepard and L.M. Kit Carson. If the long climactic conversation between Stanton and Nastassja Kinski renders the movie uneven and slightly inscrutable, it's hard to think of a more fitting ending--and besides, the achingly empty American spaces stick longer in the memory than the dialogue. Winner of the top prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival. --Robert Horton
You must love this movie if you love movies at all.
If you used to watch tra-la-la-obla-di-obla-da then you rather pass this one by and don't comment something outside of your little world.
one of cinema's great masterpieces
I recently watched Wim Wender's masterpiece Paris, Texas for the first time and like so many other of his films, this film bottles the soul and emotion in such a way as to make it painful. The long takes, mirror shots, and images of the American southwest work to create the feeling of disharmony that seems to impede Travis (Harry Stanton) from being able to understand himself and his role as a father in society. As I watched this I could not believe that Wender's could capture so much of the American spirit of the love of the land, especially wide open spaces, the Western mythos, and the true tragedy of this film and perhaps the nation, the broken home.
I found myself with tears in my eyes at the end as we watch Travis drive away after reuniting his wife and son. For those who love cinema and appreciate it as an art form, this film is a can't miss.
A great movie artistically, but a better outcome would have been nice.
This review is for the 2004 DVD release by 20th Century Fox.
I really loved the look of this movie when it started in West Texas and the cinematography was astounding. The soundtrack by Ry Cooder also fit the mood of the desert perfectly. The main character is Travis, (Harry Dean Stanton), who wanders recklessly in the Texas desert. He is later rescued by his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell), and Walt takes him back to Los Angeles to be with Walt's wife and Hunter, the son of Travis whom he abandoned 4 years earlier. We see the household situation that Hunter has been placed in with Walt and his loving wife the past several years and it seems very healthy and stable.
The film slowly moves in a direction where it appears that Travis wants to put his life back in order. Finally there is a plan to reunite Travis, his son and estranged wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski). After some amateur detective work they find Jane in Houston. There is one powerful scene where Travis confesses to Jane why he left her. The final outcome is a blemish for this film in my opinion - especially the social placement of the young boy (if you realize in what situation he was in when the movie started and what circumstance he was in when the film ended). But all in all, it's a beautifully filmed movie that's very good, but a better ending could have made it a great movie.
The DVD picture quality and audio are first rate. The only bonus feature is optional real-time commentary by director Wim Wenders.
"There are angels over the streets of Berlin," quotes the movie poster, but these are like no angels you've ever seen. Bundled in dark overcoats, they watch over the city with ears open to the heartbeat of the human soul, listening to the internal musings and yearnings of earthbound humans like existential detectives. In these delicate, astounding scenes we float through the thoughts of dozens Berlin citizens, from the weary and worn to the hopeful and young, as the angels record the magic moments for some heavenly record. But when Damiel (the empathic and sensitive Bruno Ganz) falls in love with an angel of another sort, the lonely trapeze artist Marion (willowy, sad-eyed Solveig Dommartin), he gives up the contemplation and observation of life to experience it himself.
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This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Sam Peckinpah knew he couldn't call a movie Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and get away with it. That's why he did it. When he undertook this nakedly personal project, in self-exile in Mexico, the director was a deeply bitter man out of favor with critics, the media, and the Hollywood establishment, which had just released his Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid in a mutilated version. "Bring Me the Head..." sounded like the parody title of an ultraviolent Sam Peckinpah movie, and he flung it in our faces just as his onscreen surrogate tosses the titular object at the camera.
Thing is, the movie is a masterpiece--raw, shocking, beautiful, and brave--in which Peckinpah confronts his enemies and his own demons. Warren Oates plays a gringo piano-player stuck in Mexico who... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Warren Oates - Isela Vega Director(s): Sam Peckinpah DVD Release Date: Released the 22 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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If a film fan had never heard of director Mike Leigh, one might explain him as a British Woody Allen. Not that Leigh's films are whimsical or neurotic; they are tough-love examinations of British life--funny, outlandish, and biting. His films share a real immediacy with Allen's work: they feel as if they are happening now. Leigh works with actors--real actors--on ideas and language. There is no script at the start (and sometimes not at the end). Secrets and Lies involves Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), an elegant black woman wanting to learn her birth mother's identity. She will find it's Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn), who is one of the saddest creatures we've seen in film. She's also one of the most real and, ultimately, one of the most lovable. Timothy Spall is Cynthia's brother,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Timothy Spall - Brenda Blethyn Director(s): Mike Leigh DVD Release Date: Released the 01 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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