Frank_Z Reviews

Date with an Angel (1987)

A BAD movie that just won't end.

[2/10 · 27 March 2004]

No spoilers here. The only spoiler is the wretched movie itself, trying to spoil the careers of anyone associated with it.

I kept waiting for it to get better, then for it to end. It only got worse as it went on. After an hour, I could barely stand it any more, but slogged on through to wallow in its full wretchedness.

Do angels not speak? I distinctly remember angels appearing and speaking in Bible stories. It would have been nice had writer/director Tom McLoughlin given some lines to the one actor in the movie we know has some talent - And that would be Emmanuelle Béart. But we only know that from seeing her other films, especially "Un coeur en hiver" and "L'Enfer."

This is one even a Béart completist should skip.

You've Got Mail (1998)

Cast Away Sleepless in New York

[2/10 · 9 March 2003]

How do I pick the single adjective to describe this piece?

So many come to mind: Horrible, sappy, insipid, derivitive, etc. all fit. As does "extended commercial."

This movie, mostly an ad for AOL, with a little Starbuck's thrown in, and Fox Books is obviously Barnes & Noble. But then, Tom Hanks returned to the screen in 2000 with his epic commercial for FedEx.

Skip this total waste of time.

Beatrice (1987)

Visually strong, it will stay with you!

[2 November 2002]

Set in Medieval France, La Passion Beatrice explores the coming of age of a young woman. The film is very bright and colorful, in contrast to the dark themes. The brightness works well to maintain the outlook of youth, of hope, of optimism in the face of the meanness of middle age life. In contrast to the brightness of Beatrice is the darkness of her war hero father who has become a vicious bandit manor lord.

Quite strong, even if a fairly repulsive story.

Watch this once on video with the subtitles covered so you can concentrate on the imagery.

The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1972)

Handke and Wenders explore patterns of thought and their relation to reality.

[8/10 · 2 November 2002]

The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (In German with English subtitles), a film by Wim Wenders and Peter Handke from a novella by Peter Handke (1971).

The Goalie s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is the first collaboration of Wim Wenders and Peter Handke, a collaboration which produced Wings of Desire in 1987. In The Goalie, Handke and Wenders explore patterns of thought and their relation to reality.

The main action of the film occurs in the first minute, where we get one view of how the Goalie misses blocking a penalty kick and loses the game for his team.

Later, we get to hear him describe the action and we also get a view of the way it really happened, the videotaped highlights on the tv news. They are three wonderfully different plausible representations which each explain the result just as well. While only one explains the goalie's anxiety before the penalty kick, all three allow for his anxiety afterwards.

The night after the game, the goalie goes to see "Red Line 7000." This was James Caan's first starring role, a movie about wild young stock car racers getting hooked up with women drawn to them for their romantic image, yet making them settle down once hooked. A Film about moving away from the action and into mundane adult life. So it is that the goalie's anxiety concerned with the end of playing for a living and the beginning of a mundane existence.

Then the goalie sees a film called "Die Zitten der Faelschers" (Faelschers > counterfeiters) and he makes a joke about it. Our hero picks up the ticket girl at the theater and they end up in her apartment, where he kills her as she prepares to leave for work the next day. I suspect Wenders & Handke intend for us to imply that he is killing in this film the thing that got Caan in "Red Line 7000." Several sequences later, the goalie sees another movie, "Gross Mandel," which I cannot identify.

Now Wenders plays with our patterns, our expectations. While critics complained that the plot was disjointed, I think Wenders actually is aiming for this. He is trying to get the viewer to evaluate his/her own preconceptions and expectations about plot.

Several portentous scenes play out to nothing, in the end. A boy disappears, the goalie is a stranger in town, he should be a prime suspect. Nothing. (In the novella, the goalie sees the missing boy s body float by in the scene on the footbridge). The goalie sees a movie "Nur Nach 72 Stunden" ("72 Hours to Go," the pilot for the tv show "Madigan"), what a build up for the goalie as a prime suspect being caught or shooting it out. All for naught.

Patterns... Concepts... But only possibilities, all equally probable. The goalie's explanation: Until the shot is made, all possible plays are equally real to the goalie, he must decide which play to defend (which probability is real).

Which is real? Well, this is art: It makes you think.