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If I was at least 75% sure I was right, I would tally it down. “Now is that Phil Collins solo or with Genesis? Oh wait! It’s a duet. Easy Lover. Oooooh, who does he sing that with? Bailey, Bailey, Bailey. Philip Bailey!” (For the record, it’s Philip Bailey featuring Phil Collins and was Bailey’s only solo top 40 hit.) I am not too proud to say that the best I ever did was 27/28, sometimes consecutively, sometimes in broken-up pairs of 12 & 15, et. al. More than once, I would give in to sweet, sweet sleep and simply throw in the towel.

Some nights, I would employ a similar stratagem with movies. Really long movies. My theory was that if I could start an epic-length movie at 11 or midnight and it kept me enthralled into the wee, wee hours, then it must be something special. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (172 mins, Philip Kaufman) passed the test. Until the End of the World (158 mins, Wim Wenders) was a draw. Fanny and Alexander (197 mins, Ingmar Bergman) saw me weaving in and out of sleep-deprived consciousness, but then I have never had the strongest affinity for Bergman.

I still have not caught up with the lion’s share of Wenders’ early filmography. I have seen some of his German language “road trip” movies from the 1970s (such as Alice in the Cities) and his Patricia Highsmith adaptation The American Friend but most of my viewing comes from his sprawling epics of the mid-1980s to mid-1990s: meditations on alienation in America and abroad, fears of technology overreaching the boundaries of privacy and overpowering the soul, a world where even angels feel the nagging doubt that something isn’t right and would throw over immortality for the tactile sensation of a warm cup of coffee and a chance to experience that crazy little thing called love.

Wenders sets many of these stories to the beat of some of the most idiosyncratic soundtracks of the last two decades. Until the End of the World may be a glorious mess in its shortened form (I have yet to experience the three-part 270 min. complete vision that Wenders screened infrequently in the early 90s) but the music, which Wenders commissioned by asking artists to consider what songs would sound like at the end of the 20th century, is a testament to cohesive unity. Talking Heads, Lou Reed, Elvis Costello, R.E.M., Depeche Mode, and many others contribute career-highlight cuts for an album that stands on its own as well as in support of the film.

Until the global success of his 1998 concert film/documentary Buena Vista Social Club - which took Wenders’ skill with sound tracking his films to its logical conclusion - he was perhaps best known and most acclaimed for his 1987 romantic and philosophical fantasy Wings of Desire. (In a time before I had seen either film, I seem to recall it competing frequently with Raging Bull for the title of Best Film of the 1980s.) The original German title, which translates as The Sky Above Berlin, isn’t as swooningly (or ironically) sexy but it does locate the film specifically in that divided city.

Most of the film is shot in striking black and white - for that is the limited palette through which the angels view the lives of humans - by cinematographer Robby Mueller. This fact used to connote a sense of inherent heaviness in my mind, such that it was only a recent third viewing of the film that finally helped me see past the somber trappings of its outer layer to the deadpan comedy at its core, closer in spirit to early Jim Jarmusch than I might ever have considered. Wings of Desire contains what is sure to be the only delayed Meet Cute in the history of cinema that culminates at, indeed is made all the stronger for taking place there, a concert by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. It isn’t until the final half hour that the angel Damiel (Bruno Ganz) renounces his immortality and turns in his wings for a chance to meet the trapeze artist free spirit (the late Solveig Dommartin) who has preternaturally intrigued him. The film ends shortly after they meet face to solid face.

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