Today's Suggested Viewing

The German film director Wim Wenders can be a pretty frustrating guy as an artist. Some of his work is borderline schlock, and he has had his flirtations with Hollywood fame, but at his best he is a visual poet. In his best films, Wenders has a slow, languid style of filmmaking. He concentrates on the visual, on the rhythms of the scene. Plot takes a back seat, but he manages not to be boring.

Arguably his finest work was 1987's Wings of Desire. This movie works on so many levels, a love story (That was unfortunately remade with Nick Cage), as an essay on Berlin before the fall of the wall, as a meditation on the secret lives of ordinary people, and as an allegorical tale about an Angel longing to touch and be touched.

Oh, and watch for Peter Falk. I often forget what a fine actor he is.