Until the End of the World

Director: Wim Wenders
Year Released: 1991
Rating: 1.0

At the end of the 20th century - with a nuclear satellite about to hit this sweet cesspool - Claire (Solveig Dommartin) is dashing through the continents, looking for a man named Trevor (William Hurt) who drove with her to Paris (and stole some of the money she was transporting) while her boyfriend Eugene (Sam Neill), a writer, follows her - in the second part, she's with Trevor, his blind mother (Jeanne Moreau) and researcher father (Max Von Sydow), who's working on a project to record dreams.  The idea of doing a multi-country 'road movie' is certainly ... ambitious and the incorporation of technology we use today (advanced ocular devices, search engines, facial recognition software, mapping tools) close to thirty years ago shows some real foresight, but the film itself is a sluggish train wreck: the "story" is (barely) held together with voice over and it grinds to a total halt when it gets to Australia where Wenders and co-writer Peter Carey try to be "philosophical."  Like Wim I also enjoy pop music, but there are just too many bad songs to go with the ugly video effects: the combination is nauseating.