Wings of Desire (1987)
There are angels on the streets of Berlin.
Genre : Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Runtime : 2H 8M
Director : Wim Wenders
Writer : Peter Handke, Richard Reitinger, Wim Wenders, Bernard Eisenschitz
Synopsis
Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds -- with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk -- that it might be possible for him to take human form.
Austin, Texas, is an Eden for the young and unambitious, from the enthusiastically eccentric to the dangerously apathetic. Here, the nobly lazy can eschew responsibility in favor of nursing their esoteric obsessions. The locals include a backseat philosopher who passionately expounds on his dream theories to a seemingly comatose cabbie, a young woman who tries to hawk Madonna's Pap test to anyone who will listen and a kindly old anarchist looking for recruits.
Intrepid teenage private eye Nancy Drew heads to Tinseltown with her father to investigate the unsolved murder of a movie star in this old-fashioned whodunit based on Carolyn Keene's popular series of books for young adults. But can the small-town girl cut through the Hollywood hype to solve the case?
A child is born. We see underwater swimmers representing this. He is young, in a jungle setting, with two fanciful "instincts" guiding him as swooping bird-like acrobats initially menace, then delight. As an adolescent, he enters a desert, where a man spins a large cube of metal tubing. He leaves his instinct-guides behind, and enters a garden where two statues dance in a pond. As he watches their sensual acrobatics of love, he becomes a man. He is offered wealth (represented by a golden hat) by a devil figure. In a richly decorated room, a scruffy troupe of a dozen acrobats and a little girl reawaken the old man's youthful nature and love.
Bobby Kellar has a crush on Lainie Diamond, girlfriend of school jerk Joel. Coleman is working on an experiment which will help him move into a place where Dreams are reality. When an accident occurs Coleman finds himself in Bobby's body and can only contact Bobby in his dreams.
A young girl has already seen everything there is to see and her world has lost all meaning. Her anger shatters her world and she finds herself in the universe of QUIDAM, where she is joined by a playful companion, as well as another mysterious character who attempts to seduce her with the marvelous, the unsettling and the terrifying.
The Chinese consider the lion a symbol of good luck, so it's a half-dragon, half-lion – a dralion – that is the symbol of the East-meets-West fusion of this performance in which 36 Chinese acrobats join the renowned Canadian troupe. Celebrating the four elements as represented in four colours – blue (air), green (water), red (fire) and ochre (earth) – Dralion combines ancient Chinese circus traditions with Cirque du Soleil's usual stunning elements: the techno-oriented single ring; the multicoloured lights and costumes; the music that mixes rock, New Age and various world influences (though not Chinese); and the madcap clowns that pull a victim out of the audience.
After eight years apart, three childhood friends - Lucy, Kit, and Mimi - rediscover their friendship on a cross-country trip. With barely a plan, practically no money but plenty of dreams, the girls catch a lift with Mimi's handsome friend Ben in his convertible. Along the way they not only gather experiences that will change their lives, but they also discover how important it is to hold onto their hearts' desires.
A seductive woman gets an innocent professor mixed up in murder.
In a small Jewish community in a pre-Revolutionary Russian village, a poor milkman, determined to find good husbands for his five daughters, consults the traditional matchmaker – and also has words with God.
Hawaii, Oslo is the story of a handful of people who cross each other's path without necessarily knowing each other, during the hottest day of the year, in Oslo. We follow Frode and Milla. They are having their first child, who they are told will not live long. We follow Bobbie-Pop, a faded singer who tries to commit suicide. We follow Leon, an institutionalized kleptomaniac who is loking for Åsa, to whom he has a ten year old deal to get married. We meet Leon's brother, Trygve, who fetches Leon at the institution to celebrate his birthday, but who himself has plans to use his leave from prison to run away. And most of all we meet the angel Vidar, Leon's best buddy at the institution, who sees things no one else can see, and who may be able to save everyone - except himself?
A young girl discovers an idealized parallel universe behind a secret door in her new home, unaware that it contains a sinister secret.
The President's daughter, unable to experience life like a normal 18 year-old, escapes from her entourage of Secret Service agents while traveling in Europe. She falls in love with a handsome British stranger, who also happens to be working undercover for her father.
Christmas 1945. In a train from Stockholm to Berlin are a motley collection. It is the failure of the author Gunnar who wants to leave his old life and make a contribution in Berlin; physician Henry who plan to marry Marie and likewise Henry's current wife Karin, who he plans to kill during the journey, the middle-aged gay couple Pompe and Sixten, a soldier going to Uppsala but is on the wrong train: the cheerful and cynical old Margaret, and a dressed elf and a surly conductor. With the train are also a number of Baltic refugees accompanied by two nuns to be sent to Germany.
Lene Thurner is standing on a train platform in Munich. She has to decide: back to Berlin where she lives, or toward the south, where at the foot of the Alps her family lives on the lonely farm “Hierankl”.
Teenager Winnie Foster is growing up in a small rural town in 1914 with her loving but overprotective parents, but Winnie longs for a life of greater freedom and adventure.
A 1968 event put together by The Rolling Stones. The film is comprised of two concerts on a circus stage and included such acts as The Who, Taj Mahal, Marianne Faithfull, and Jethro Tull. John Lennon and his fiancee Yoko Ono performed as part of a supergroup called The Dirty Mac, along with Eric Clapton, Mitch Mitchell, and Keith Richards.
The true story of William Wilberforce and his courageous quest to end the British slave trade. Along the way, Wilberforce meets intense opposition, but his minister urges him to see the cause through.
As Australian cinema broke through to international audiences in the 1970s through respected art house films like Peter Weir's "Picnic At Hanging Rock," a new underground of low-budget exploitation filmmakers were turning out considerably less highbrow fare. Documentary filmmaker Mark Hartley explores this unbridled era of sex and violence, complete with clips from some of the scene's most outrageous flicks and interviews with the renegade filmmakers themselves.
Four stoners, five vegans, three mobsters, four hunters and a million reasons to free one junkie elephant.
In a fantasy world of opposing kingdoms, a 15-year old girl must find the fabled MirrorMask in order to save the kingdom and get home.
At a young age, Nitaroh is stricken with an illness that leaves him blind. He inherits the shamisen guitar once used by his mother and is taught its basics by a blind travelling shamisen player. In time with the help of friends old and new, he walks the paths that leads to his ultimate fate - that of founder of the Tsugaru style of shamisen play.
A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.
Damiel is now married to Marion, runs the pizzeria “Da Angelo” and the two have a child. The solitarily remaining angel Cassiel is more and more dissatisfied with his destiny as a mere observer of human life and finally decides to take the great leap. As Karl Engel he soon gets into a dubious milieu and finds himself as the assistant of the German American Baker, who makes his money with shady arms deals and sends films east in exchange for weapons. Cassiel’s adventure turns into a “thriller” when he decides to put a stop to Baker’s game.
Antonio, Peppino and Lucia are three brothers who live in the country near Naples. Lucia's son, Gianni, goes to Naples to study medicine, but there he knows a ballet dancer. They fall in love and, when she goes to Milan, Gianni follows her. Informed of this and afraid that their nephew will stop studying, the three Caponi brothers leave for Milan to persuade Gianni to come back and continue studying and abandon the "Malafemmina" (bad girl).
In 1999, Claire's life is forever changed after she survives a car crash with two bank robbers, who enlist her help to take the money to a drop in Paris. On the way she runs into another fugitive from the law — Dr. Sam Farber, an American who is being chased by the CIA. They want to confiscate a device his father invented which allows anyone to record their dreams and visions. On the run they travel the globe from Berlin to Lisbon to Moscow to Tokyo, ending up in Australia at his father's research facility, where they hope to play back the recordings Farber captured for his blind mother.
Lisbon Story is Wim Wenders' homage to Lisbon and films. A sound engineer obtains a mysterious postcard from a friend who at the moment is filming a film in Lisbon. He sets out across Europe to find him and help him.
Somewhere in the spanish country, in the 60s. Paco and his wife Régula are very poor. They work as tenant farmers for a very wealthy landowner. They have 3 children. One is backward. The others can not got to school because the master "needs" their work. When Regula's brother is fired from where he has worked for 61 years, he settles down at their little place... An attack against the archaism of the spanish country of the 60s.
An executive of a shoe company becomes a victim of extortion when his chauffeur's son is kidnapped and held for ransom.
A man arrives in Helsinki and gets beaten up so severely he develops amnesia. Unable to remember his name or anything from his past life, he cannot get a job or an apartment, so he starts living on the outskirts of the city and slowly starts putting his life back on track.
In this fascinating Oscar-nominated documentary, American guitarist Ry Cooder brings together a group of legendary Cuban folk musicians (some in their 90s) to record a Grammy-winning CD in their native city of Havana. The result is a spectacular compilation of concert footage from the group's gigs in Amsterdam and New York City's famed Carnegie Hall, with director Wim Wenders capturing not only the music -- but also the musicians' life stories.
A young woman with nothing to look forward to in life discovers that she has been impregnated by a man who wants nothing to do with it.
Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
A small group of cosmic explorers, including a woman, leaves Earth to start a new civilization. They do not realize that within themselves they carry the end of their own dream. They die one by one, while their children revert to a primitive native culture, creating new myths and a new god.
Alexander, a journalist, philosopher and retired actor, celebrates a birthday with friends and family when it is announced that nuclear war has begun.
Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.
Valentine, a student model in Geneva, struggles with a possessive boyfriend and a troubled family. When she runs over a dog, she discovers that its owner, a retired judge, is illegally wiretapping and eavesdropping on his neighbors' phone calls. Although Valentine is outraged, she develops a strange bond with the judge – and as the two become closer, she finds herself caught in the middle of events that could change her life.
Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.
The tragic, true story about Hachikō, an Akita dog who was loyal to his master, Professor Ueno, even after Ueno's death.
Low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel. Investigating a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle, he meets the woman from his daydream, and in trying to help her gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.
The Million Dollar Hotel starts with a jump from a roof top that clears up a death in a hotel that was burning to the ground where a lot of strange people had been living.