***image1*** Music-makers makin' movies.
WINGS OF DESIRE
Colombo isn't nearly as cool as Peter Falk, playing himself, in Wim Wenders' beautifully shot ode to guardian angels. Set along the Berlin Wall, which plays metaphor to the character's struggles with their own place in the world, it's part postcard, part poetry. Few actors speak their lines, instead giving life to inner monologues. As the film transitions between black-and-white and color scenes we are taken into the world of God's creatures as they become privy to ours. Nick Cave's appearance makes for a final gesture of symbolism that the otherworldly is indeed not so different.
SHORT CUTS
Adding Tom Waits, Huey Lewis and Lyle Lovett to a cast of seasoned actors makes Robert Altman's reconstruction of Raymond Carver stories quirky and quaint. Carver's vignettes end at the moment of narrative climax and Altman transforms them into a community, without losing the heartbreak and moral ambiguity of the original works. These characters cross paths, but don't influence the stories of one another; instead, they merely appear as cameos in a series of unrelated but similar events taking place over a few days in suburban Los Angeles. The special DVD includes documentaries on Carver as well as a book of the original stories.
THE HUNGER
The Bowie of the '80s was a super-slick, suit-wearing, cocaine-snorting maniac. Add a stylish pair of sunglasses and sexy French co-star (Catherine Deneuve) and you get David Bowie, vampire. Even Lestat can't stand up to the dark, campy sex of
The Hunger
. These vamps can travel by day, but prefer the confines of sleek discotheques, stealing club-goers away to the mansion for late night dinners, where the guests are the
soup du jour
. The cast is sexy: Bowie, Devenue and Susan Sarandon make the aesthetics of vampirism more important than plot, but with all this beauty and designer clothing, plot is the least of anyone's worries. Though Bowie's never been a handsome man, in
The Hunger
, he is a bloodcurdling hottie.
