Jimmy Little Movies

Wim Wenders' sprawling cyberpunk noir epic -- shot in no less than nine different countries -- is set in 1999 and stars Solveig Dommartin as Claire, a young Frenchwoman who comes into contact with a large sum of money stolen during a bank heist; in her travels she picks up a mysterious American hitchhiker (William Hurt), who himself steals some of the money before parting from her company. Upon discovering the theft, Claire sets out on his trail, with both a Hammett-styled German private eye (Rudiger Vogler) as well as her former lover, a novelist portrayed by Sam Neill, in tow. The hitchhiker is really Sam Farber, the son of an underground scientist (Max Von Sydow), and his mission is to travel the globe in order to acquire the funding necessary to develop the technology which will allow his blind mother (Jeanne Moreau) to "see" visual recordings of her family members; the second half of the film takes place largely in the Farbers' compound in the Australian Outback, where Sam, Claire and the others take refuge while attempting to bring the sight project to its fruition, in the meantime pondering earth's future in the wake of a nuclear disaster in outer space. Wenders' most ambitious film to date, budgeted at $23 million, Until the End Of the World is also among his most seriously flawed efforts -- despite a keen sense of cultural perception, a fascinating sci-fi take on life in the near-future and stunning Robby Muller cinematography, the picture never quite gels. Much of the blame seems to fall upon its distributors -- upon its wide release in 1991, the movie was drastically cut to a running time of 2 1/2 hours, resulting in a disjointed narrative that doesn't shift gears so much as grind them as the action moves from country to country. Still, while a three-hour version, issued on laserdisc in Japan, comes closer to realizing the full scope of Wenders' epic vision, rumors of a five-hour director's cut -- said to have been screened to thunderous applause at a handful of film festivals -- continue to persist, suggesting that a masterpiece may well exist here after all. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

New chorus member Eadie Allen (Ann Miller) is the only thing that's good or lively or fresh in a run-down burlesque revue run by Tommy Farley (William Wright). He gives her a featured number and soon she's the star of the show, and he'd like to get to know her better because, conniver though he is, he's also genuinely falling in love with her, but she won't let him know anything about herself. And with good reason -- Eadie is a socially prominent debutante, a member of an old-money family of blue-noses; she wants to be an actress (something they wouldn't hear of) and Farley was the only producer willing to hire her. She's appalled by burlesque, and the physical comedy she's forced to perform, but the audience loves her and she gets to prove she can do a good song, and is also conned by Farley -- appealing to her patriotism and her good nature -- to stay with it. And she becomes a star, which is wonderful until the two sides of her life start to collide at the edges. Her college roommate Pepper (Miss Jeff Donnell) is attracted to the eccentric Professor Diogenes Dingle (Joe Besser), who is no professor but a burlesque comic himself impersonating a teacher; and one of Eadie's legitimate teachers twice spots her performing on stage and otherwise identified in public. The complications pile up until it looks as though Eadie will lose her chance at real love and also her chance to graduate from college. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide