It's a sad and beautiful world: the Jim Jarmusch poll.

It's a hard choice for me, because I basically think all of his films besides Permanent Vacation and Ghost Dog are great (and even those two have many great moments). I think I'll have to vote for Down by Law, because few other films so perfectly sum the way I feel about life.

down by law, though i need to see it again

GHOST...DOG?

i don't think he's topped 'mystery train' since he made that (dead man comes close, I guess); broken flowers was so disappointing. so, mystery train!

torn between down by law and ghost dog, voted ghost dog.

i didn't think broken flowers was all that bad, but i didn't expect it to be good either.

i've only seen 5 of these btw

Mystery Train is a sentimental favorite but something about Stranger than Paradise made me choose it.

Broken Flowers is better than Coffee & Cigarettes; still awful

"Mystery Train" because nothing else I've seen was particularly exciting.

'ghost dog'

Dead Man just about over Ghost Dog.

Can't decide between "Dead Man" and "Mystery Train."

i liked broken flowers. i haven't seen any other jarmusch film though.

Nick OTM, "Down by Law" never stops working for me. "Ghost Dog" is pretty great, too, but requires... I dunno... one more half a layer of distance to appreciate.

(i'm not going to vote.)

Broken Flowers was underwhelming upon my first viewing. It has become one of my fave movies upon subsequent viewings. Down By Law is such a beautiful movie.

down by law

broken flowers was really good, chaki otm

Dead Man is almost as good as Ghost Dog, but Ghost Dog has RZA beats.

that mulatu soundtrack!

yes!

Mystery Train

but I could have just as easily voted for any of these:

Night on Earth
Dead Man
Stranger Than Paradise
Down by Law
Ghost Dog

GHOST...DOG?

...HE'S Gay

I've seen all but the first (though it's now in my dvd library) and the last two, and like Mystery Train the least

I don't know the answer yet

just put mystery train and dead man on my queue

and yet the world continues to turn...

i'm going to act like that wasn't an xpost

no, the world pretty much waits for me, actually

stranger than paradise

nothing beats the five minute shot of dude drinking his beer

lol @ "all but the first two and the last two"

+ mystery train ftw

lol @ "all but the first two and the last two"

learn to read better

coffee and cigarettes is terrible. i like ghost dog and dead man. i havent seen anything else

In order, but the first four are pretty close:
Dead Man (1995)
Ghost Dog (1999)
Mystery Train (1989)
Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
Broken Flowers (2005)
Down by Law (1986)
Night on Earth (1991) (this mostly weak, but the paris, new york and helsinki bits all have moments--the la bit is the worst thing he's ever done)
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) (also mostly garbage, but I seem to remember a few good bits.)

Haven't seen, don't care about:
Permanent Vacation (1980)
Year of the Horse (1997)

I lean toward Ghost Dog over Dead Man because I think it's more stylish and because the-inner-city-is-dying is more relevant than indians-died-a-long-time-ago, and because I think he gets the tri-state area a little better than the West. Greater reach than STP, sure, but not sure they're really better. Night on Earth was my first and yes the LA part sucks and I hate Roberto Benigni but while I haven't seen it in ages I think fake Spike Lee and fake Kaurismaki and faux whoever might still feel more soulful than any of his others.

I think I'm going to make a policy of not seeing Bill Murray movies from now on. No offense, you know.

I never intended to see Year of the Horse, but it's not a bad movie, even if you don't care about Neil.

i like it!

more relevant than indians-died-a-long-time-ago

ok, sure it has lots of more current more-than-overtones, but they just aren't all that interesting

wait, I've never really watched Down By Law straight ("straight") through, have I?

lol, college

Down By Law has not aged well.

maybe it's just a lot easier to feel sad for Forest Whittaker than it is for Johnny Depp

Well I don't think you are really supposed to feel sad for Johnny Depp.

The indie/artsy/outsider voice wanted to vote for Down By Law or Stranger Than Paradise. But the viewer in me won out and voted Mystery Train. Mainly because of it's repeatability. Screamin Jay Hawkins & Cinque Lee? Absolutely classic. &fwiw, Permanent Vacation was bad. Bad, bad.

Well I don't think you are really supposed to feel sad for Johnny Depp.

no I suppose not, but for what he represents I meant

that Gary Farmer is so good-natured and has such funny sayings and no wonky eye

learn to read better

*takes a reading course*

what you said is still retarded

i guess calling me names is a way to get me to pay attention to you. which, you know, i would never do otherwise.

*takes a caring course*

i'm gonna see the golden compass tonight

i know nothing about it!

something about bears, nicole kidman looking bitchy, and daniel craig ftw in the end probably

nicole kidman in looking bitchy shock

she cant even help it anymore

ALL OTM

Mystery Train - for Screamin' Jay, the Carl Perkins dialogue, Natchez = Matches, that fucking awesome pan shot of the Italian women in the airport with the airplane taking off behind her, and of course, "lost in space".

http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/9940/18830783gl1.jpg

Steve Buscemi is the only actor in that truck cab who's still alive.

Or, as gabbnebb might say: they are all alive except the one on the right and the one on the left.

alex's ranking is otm on all counts.

although ok maybe i'd bump stranger than paradise up to 2nd place. i love that movie unconditionally.

love him for his movies, and also for carving out the career he's had. i'm not really sure how he's done it, since i don't think he's ever made much money for himself or anyone else. although maybe not caring a whole lot about that is a necessary ingredient. (also probably doesn't hurt to be the coolest guy in the room, which he probably often is.)

1) dead man
2) stranger than fiction
2) down by law
2) mystery train
5) the rest
6) except for the ones i haven't seen (permanent vacation, year of the horse)

dead man is like one of my top movies of ... uh ... ever?

Dead Man is amazing from beginning to end, and back round again.

I do have a weak spot for Ghost Dog, I admit

i haven't seen year of the horse, but the neil young score (if you can call it that) to dead man is one of my favorite soundtracks.

i'm with remy, noodle and tipsy. one of my all-time favourites.

Strangerthan Paradise by a ocuntry mile.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

xxxpost: I love Dead Man except for the soundtrack (and I am a Neil Young fan). It's really lazy and boring. I mean, compare it to Ry Cooder's Paris, Texas.

really? that's interesting, because i was never a neil young fan till i saw dead man. but ry cooder's st for paris, texas is fucking awesome.

Everything about Dead Man sets it apart. The entertaining ugly violence, the score, his best-looking black & white film and his best cast: Depp, Robert Mitchum, Gabriel Byrne, John Hurt, Iggy Pop, Crispin Glover, Alfred Molina, Billy Bob Thornton, and Bishop.

dead man is like one of my top movies of ... uh ... ever?

-- remy bean, Wednesday, December 12, 2007 11:56 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Link

that soundtrack

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

i don't get 'dead man'. it's going great guns until he meets the indian guy then it's zzzzzzzzzzz all the way, though the end is nice.

wow me and alex in sf have the same jarmusch preferences

i don't get 'dead man'. it's going great guns until he meets the indian guy then it's zzzzzzzzzzz all the way, though the end is nice.

if you would like more entertainment from your tragedies, i would refer you instead to the film 'ghost dog', which has gunshots

i guess dead man has those too. but it's in black and white. also, ghost dog has, like, dope beats and stuff.

yeah 'ghost dog' is the freshness.

but with 'dead man', you get the feeling the mystical shit is for real.

yes, all those people did die

http://www.ica.org.uk/Jarmusch%20in%20Context+22863.twl

this looks rad, londoners. chance to see the cameraman, they live by night, l'atalante and branded to kill.

Wonder if I voted in this. Would've been Ghost Dog, probably.

if night on earth had a few votes in favour of how much fun it is, the results would be pretty much otm.

I didn't get dead man either. what was the point?

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/acid-western/Content?oid=890861

still don't get it

good read! i like Dead Man, but i haven't seen it years. review will probably prompt a re-watch in the near future.

xpost

Add me to the list of those who didn't get Dead Man when it first came out--I remember drifting and fidgeting through the whole thing--but liked it a lot better tonight. (Saw it right after Imitation of Life...I won't pretend it was a double-bill--two separate theatres.) I wish Iggy Pop's bit of silliness weren't there--he's a needless distraction--and the series of fade-outs right at the start seemed excessive. But the violence and the overall mood registered this time, and there were a number of really beautiful shots. Liked the music fine. I'll have to mull over all the William Blake and millennial undercurrents, but they're evocative.

http://www.salon.com/1999/12/02/deadman/

I love Dead Man but haven't seen it for years. My first viewing was with a friend who didn't really know anything about Jarmusch, and when we came out he said, "That was like a European movie about America." Which I think makes sense in ways he didn't even mean.

And I didn't know Marcus was a fan of My Twentieth Century. There's a movie that deserves its own thread, if there was any way to actually see the thing any more.

I remember being surprised when it showed up fairly high on decade-end polls, somewhere in the 10-20 range on a couple that I remember--it didn't seem to get a lot of attention on release. I can understand that better now; it does capture something. (Never heard of My Twentieth Century.)

Stranger Than Paradise held up well for me. I saw it four or five times in the '80s, but not since then. I was very susceptible to its mood and its look at the time--it seemed like such an emphatic no to where American film was then headed. I was more mindful tonight of certain affectations--the blacking out especially--but I still think it has a kind of small-scale perfection, and probably lots of Reagan-era resonances (intended or not) too. A lot of lines came back to me immediately--when Aunt Lottie walked away in disgust as the three of them headed out for Florida, I said (in my best Hungarian accent) "Son of a bitch" a second before she did. Richard Edson's priceless, and I still have a crush on Eszter Balint. (There was a record store in Toronto in the '80s that had an Eszter lookalike working for them.) I didn't know then who Rammellzee was, so that was nice. Not sure if I'll get around to watching Permanent Vacation, which is included on a second disc.

Permanent Vacation is at least worth watching once. It's interesting to see what Brooklyn looked like a million years ago.

yeah you're off by nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred and sixty seven years.

gabbneb was so unpleasant, glad he hasn't turned back up *knocks on wood*

otm.

i love 'stranger than paradise' a lot, and like-to-love everything else i've seen of his.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_limp7oRAHp1qis5gbo1_500.jpg

Screamin' Jay is still my main man.

Or, as gabbnebb might say: they are all alive except the one on the right and the one on the left.

― roxymuzak, Thursday, December 13, 2007 1:27 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol six years later..

finally watched dead man - p much loved it

Another bounty hunter (Michael Wincott) sleeps with a teddy bear and muses at one point, "Ever wish you were the moon?" When Wilson happens upon the corpses of two marshals (named Lee and Marvin), he notes that the head of one of them "looks like a goddamn religious icon" and promptly crushes it like a cantaloupe under his heel--an image of astonishing, shocking beauty.

things u want to c&p over&over

Bump because I saw Only Lovers Left Alive last night and feel the need to say something about it. It's gorgeous, but since I keep calling it "the hipster's Twilight," I feel guilty about liking it.

think jarmusch is p on point in prefixing all discussion of 'guilty pleasures' with 'there are no such things as guilty pleasures'
saw this last night, too & was intermittently charmed - tilda dancing to the 45 was goosebumps - but also found it just kind of unintentionally loose like his last couple, in a way that kinda just poignantly emphasises the cohesion of his original experiments with this type of structure. strong in trad jarmusch mode (as a sorta mystery train reimagining), then generally less confident as a modern/digital film. it's nice to be in his head for a couple hours, though. jeffrey wright stealing the show.

Local press went apeshit when it played the Miami Film Festival last month.

there is a pink & blue embroidered bedsheet in it that will make you lose your mind

Really want to see this film, vampires be damned.

er... no pun intended.

I was totally into this. Found it endlessly amusing - the hyper-coolness, the sunglasses, Ian, Jack White's house...

If you asked a movie-making computer "I want a Jim Jarmusch flick about vampires" this is what would come out

It was pretty good!

for those who care about such things, the action at a distance stuff wasn't total bullshit, and i feel like jarmusch must have known that the canonical way of explaining einstein's idea about quantum theory (which turned out to be wrong fwiw) is with ... gloves!

I'm watching this atm and I just need to say that I feel like I'm splitting in two as I watch it

grown up me is going omggggggggg its so corny with the marlowe and the guitars and the books and the everything

and yet

18 year old me is literally peeeing her pants over this whole thing. its so jarmusch, its so what i wanted a vampire movie to be back then WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG JIM

Its killing me. i think i love it even though i am so aware of how big of a facepalm it should be

this was only my second exposure to jarmusch after ghost dog. i thought it was so dreadful and tedious. to me it was laughable that these characters were supposed to be cool. all they did was namedrop and use their vampire powers to do things well. i'm astounded that so few critics found this movie similarly awful.

it's the viiiibe, man

I'm not much of a Jarmusch fan beyond Stranger Than Paradise, which probably set me up well for liking Only Lovers Left Alive more than I thought I would. Seemed to be about a few things simultaneously: junk, Detroit, the end of history. (Also thought it might have been about Jim Morrison--what he might be up to today if, you know--but that's my own projection.) Thought it was great getting in a few seconds of Charlie Feathers' original "I Can't Hardly Stand It," because--honest truth--I was thinking ahead of that that this was a film Lux Interior might have liked. (I wish there'd been more than a few seconds, though.) Tilda Swinton gets off one terrifically funny line; if you've seen the film, you'll know which line I mean. I would have liked a longer look at Tom Hiddleston's wall of I-don't-have-heroes--only managed to pick out Keaton, Joe Strummer, Kafka, and Einstein.

some of those are billed via photographer credits at the end. like: claire denis.

Missed that, and I stayed for the credits to find out who did the old soul song Tilda Swinton danced to (Denise LaSalle).

loved the wanda jackson too

Yes. I was a little confused when that played--didn't know the song, and felt a disconnect between the 45 spinning and what seemed like something weird and relatively recent. Never would have guessed in a million years it was Wanda Jackson.

so the last film of his I really enjoyed was Dead Man, Ghost Dog was ok, and I've pretty much hated everything since. Is this new one worth checking out or is it terrible?

I'll probably watch on Saturday but have held out because, yes, I've always been skeptical of Jarmusch.

Permanent Vacation was quite a slog. I liked how it felt a little like science-fiction, and the symmetry with the French guy at the end made an obvious point well. Maybe it would have worked with a lead character who was engaging rather than annoying. Something I couldn't understand: The Savage Innocents (which I haven't seen) is playing at the movies, but from the lobby you can hear Morricone's "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

yeah i was not so into 'only lovers', idk it's v nearly a good concept but it's also very nearly like a precocious sophomores creative writing project

GHOST...DOG?

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, December 12, 2007 10:36 AM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

HE SAID GHOST DOG!

Yes. I was a little confused when that played--didn't know the song, and felt a disconnect between the 45 spinning and what seemed like something weird and relatively recent. Never would have guessed in a million years it was Wanda Jackson.

I'd have to see the movie again to be sure but I think it's a cover of Funnel of Love by Jarmusch's band Squrl that plays in that scene

it's more slowed down and tripped out than the Wanda Jackson version

Not to reiterate what everyone knows by now, but Only Lovers Left Alive was really good! For a vampire movie directed by Jim Jarmusch and starring Tilda Swinton this was a lot more...playful, I guess, than I ever would have expected, to the point that the occasional dour spots were my biggest problem with the film. This is the first Swinton performance I've genuinely liked, too--her androgynous ice-queen act does nothing for me, and I wasn't even that much of a fan of the well-regarded I Am Love. Funny that it took a vampire for her to get a role with an actual pulse. Would have liked a bit more of John Hurt's Marlowe, though.

saw OLLA last night - pretty good, a bit lifeless (*rimshot*) and I didn't laugh much, apart from the final shot. Several really beautiful sequences, especially the opening and the cruising around Detroit stuff, but the general approach (vampires as junkies!) and lack of any real conflict until the final third made it feel listless.

yes, Paterson references William Carlos Williams

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-cannes-2016-jim-jarmuschs-paterson

https://vimeo.com/165056550

Adam Driver also on tap in new Scorsese, Gilliam, Soderbergh films

dude is def having a moment

Paterson is a great location, I hope it was actually filmed there.

from the clips, looks like it is

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/jim-jarmuschs-gimme-danger-cannes-895695

New movie doc on Iggy and the Stooges, from him also

Read someone on Facebook who had been at Cannes, say the Iggy doc was decent but not great.

Can believe it

decent but not great

describes every Jim Jarmusch project since Ghost Dog

including Ghost Dog

but no, Limits of Control was submediocre

Limits of Control was def below par

i enjoyed the vampire one quite a bit

looks like Paterson could be a throwback to early minimalist/kitchen-sink JJ (only in color)

I'm amazed that I gave the vampire one (which I liked) a chance after Limits of Control.

vampire one was definitely the best of these later films, but it wasn't exactly great

I went in expecting not to like it and was pleasantly surprised.

I went in expecting Tilda Swinton to be Tilda Swinton and was pleasantly surprised.

vampire movie was really good imo

It is called Only Lovers Left Alive. Yeah, I'd like to see it again actually. Went in with very little expectations and a slight buzz and ended up really syncing with the mood and pace of the thing.

I also liked Limits of Control more than most, but I get the dislike.

including Ghost Dog

― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, May 24, 2016 3:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^looking for a suit and tie rap

I went in expecting not to like it and was pleasantly surprised.

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 24 May 2016 20:58 (Yesterday) Permalink

this! it was good, a few on-the-noise jack white references aside.

vampire one was definitely the best of these later films, but it wasn't exactly great

― Al Moon Faced Poon (Moodles), Tuesday, May 24, 2016 4:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this, if you deem the later films to begin with coffee and cigarettes, as i do

seeing this tonight at NYFF after all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8pGJBgiiDU

The trailer for Gimme Danger went up on youtube last week

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Po8nz1eEsU

ban talking heads in music docs imo

Paterson among JJ's best imho!

whoa

keep in mind I only really like Down by Law and a couple others.

some nice NJ cultural shoutouts, not jus William Carlos Williams.

i'll probably dig it anyway but that's a solid recommendation imo

Variety's hook for a JJ interview is, of course, he's never seen some space epic

http://variety.com/2016/film/news/jim-jarmusch-on-boycotting-star-wars-bringing-paterson-to-cannes-1201776665/

Fred Elmes in brilliant form with the images btw. Critical roundup:

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-nyff-2016-jim-jarmuschs-paterson

Looking forward to this. I've enjoyed a lot of Jarmusch films, though Stranger Than Paradise has always been my pick. The way the above describes Paterson, it seems similar to how I'd describe STP.

For the French readers: there's a huge career spanning interview with some new Nan Goldin portrait shots in this month's Cahiers.

Also looking forward to seeing what he did with my hometown in "Paterson".

better use of falls / Lou Costello statue than The Sopranos

my fave Jarmusch are Down by Law + Dead Man but most of his stuff is at least enjoyable. Only a couple are outright bad. So I'm looking forward to this.

I'll pass on Paterson; I can't stand Adam Driver. His only redeeming quality is that he's not Michael Cera.

The Stooges documentary could be interesting - I mean, Fun House is probably the greatest rock album of all time - but I'm worried because both the Asheton brothers are dead, which leaves the story in Iggy's hands, and he was referring to the Stooges as "my band" as far back as the '70s.

Driver definitively illustrates that he is not the Girls schmuck in this.

I've never seen Girls.

what did you hate him in? that last Baumbach film was not good.

I'm sorry to have to let you know his highest-profile role is in Star Wars

well i was assuming perhaps naively that people would judge him on an acting appearance.

btw history sez they are Iggy's band, deal with it

Paterson is really wonderful.

Stooges doc was surprisingly shoddily made. Parts with Iggy talking were good but the whole design and editing of the movie was very much cheap VH1 rockumentary.

talking heads format in the trailer put me off

“For some time now, Jim Jarmusch has been operating as an autocritical dialectician in his fictional features,” writes Jonathan Rosenbaum for the new issue of Trafic. “Politically as well as commercially, The Limits of Control [2009] offers a sharp rebuke to his preceding film, Broken Flowers [2005],” and he elaborates. “But even more striking is the radical contrast between Jarmusch’s most elitist feature (and in many ways my least favorite), Only Lovers Left Alive [2013] . . . and Jarmusch’s most populist feature (and one of my favorites), Paterson [2016].”

https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2017/06/jarmsuchs-lost-america-the-pleasures-of-paterson/

spoilers within

from Film Comment:

Jim Jarmusch is filming The Dead Don’t Die, a “zombie comedy,” in upstate New York, with a cohort of actors both familiar in the director’s oeuvre (Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Adam Driver, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi) and new (Selena Gomez). Just don’t call it a zom-com, please.

Sounds great

I should get around to Patterson i suppose

Eh

you're eh

I’m usually slow to getting around to his latest releases but rally the only one that I didn’t like at all was that assassin one.

(Not Ghost Dog, the other one)

Only Lovers Left Alive? was he an assassin in that or just a stoned vampire

The Limits of Control, right? v forgettable

Yes that one

Vampire one was great

paterson was really nice, i'm still mad about how shitty the stooges documentary was though

I was sure Paterson was gonna suck (I hate Adam Driver) but it was really good. I know I saw The Limits of Control but I have absolutely no memory of it. Only Lovers Left Alive was better than it should have been. I'm not going anywhere near this zombie thing, though.

^^ co-sign

Paterson is Jarmusch's best film, imo.

His last two are.

I really loved Stranger Than Paradise and Down By Law (and Broken Flowers to some extent), but I think I agree the last two are the best

I've liked a couple of the recent films, but I don't think they're anywhere near as good as Stranger Than Paradise.

will have to see it again, it's been forever

eff off with the zombie crap.

that was addressed to the world.

xp I remember at the time an older artist friend, an idol of mine, thought that Stranger Than Paradise might have been just about the best movie of all time

(xpost) I saw it five years ago (checked back in the last-x thread; can we start a new one? it's an ordeal checking 5,000+ posts) and thought it held up very well. I don't know if I can think of another film with a better control of deadpan.

Stranger Than Paradise is definitely his best film - I've never seen anything else like it - and Down By Law is right up there.

Kinda broad, but hey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs5ZOcU6Bnw

Came to post that too...Some good deadpan in there, but it'd have to be really, really funny, I would think, to justify an idea that's been done to death.

(And if not that, have the greatest soundtrack ever.)

man, Stranger Than Paradise blows. Permanent Vacation is better in every way: compelling lead, interesting score, more variety in the vignettes, beautiful no budget cinematography. STP... Lurie is fine, the girl is good, but Edson is annoying as fuck. fedoras and no style, whereas the kid in PV has so much more range and does a lot more with nothing. anyone know if the final shot is an explicit reference to News From Home or was that ferry shot fairly common?

Love Stranger Than Paradise--when it came out, 10 times since, and again when I watched it last year. I can't think of another film that sustains deadpan humour so perfectly for 90 minutes.

Which is exactly what I said six posts ago last year...I need new words.

I watched Permanent Vacation and Stranger Than Paradise this past week with flappy bird’s comments in mind, but I thought Stranger Than Paradise was so great, that it was much better realized in its look at alienation, manners and fashion than the first film

it was meandering but ultimately meaningful I thought. I loved that the two leads were such doppelgängers. aunt Lotte stole the show in the middle third.

I also like that it was shot in flattened shades of gray, that each scene was basically static and was comprised of a single shot, that each scene was separated by a blackout that felt like a power outage, correlating with the expressionless quality of the whole story.

It is great. Flappy’s got a lot of whack opinions.

lol

Permanent Vacation is the only Jarmusch movie I’ve never been able to finish

the thing about Stranger Than Paradise for me is that I find those guys unbearably annoying. in a movie with more going on, this wouldn't necessarily be a fatal blow for me, but in a mood piece, it's a non-starter. PV hits me but obviously if you don't like the main guy it's gonna be hard to finish. STP, I'm just disengaged from the beginning. I watched One Sings, the Other Doesn't recently and really liked it a lot, despite how didactic and formal it is. I'm won over by the leads and Varda's sensibility. another director, different stars, maybe a different story.

I'll give you another example: I saw a movie called Soy Cuba last week. Shot with a telephoto lens with tons of distortion, looks like it was shot from inside a snowglobe. Malick must've seen this movie because his style of roving handheld cinematography is all over Soy Cuba. and I couldn't get into it. I was disconnected from the beginning, and all my friends loved it. it's not an intellectual disagreement, it's a gut reaction. the spell was broken. Altman's slow zoom is another device that calls attention to itself and attempts to say something w/o words. that's something that hits me at my core, but I understand people that find it hokey or artificial or even distracting.

and it goes w/o saying there is no right or wrong with this. if a movie moves you, you're willing to forgive a lot more than with something where you might be disconnected from the start. there are some stunning shots in Soy Cuba, and probably some things in STP I like, but enough to win me over.

Are you talking about the 1964 Kalatozov film? It's been ages since I saw that, but I remember it being both stylistically dazzling and massively hyperbolic about the pre-Castro regime.

Am I the only one who thinks the cult of early Jarmusch is tied up with nostalgia for pre-Giuliani New York? Mind you, I took The Limits of Control as an extremely loose take on Don Quixote, so I could be wrong.

Yes, that's the one. I liked it more than any Malick movie but like I said I found the style really tiresome. technically impressive but emotionally vacant for me. and yeah it was partially funded by Cuba so it's pretty much just propaganda.

Is there a cult of early Jarmusch?

STP stands as just a phenomenal drifting hang-out movie. Still the most enjoyable thing he’s done, front to back.

phenomenal drifting hang-out movie is a great description

Saw the trailer for the new one again. What is with every zombie whatever having a samurai sword wielding zombie master? There's one in World War Z (the book), there is one in the Walking Dead (books and show), and there is one in this one.

(By my math, I think that's all of them.)

maybe should do another poll in a couple months once people see TDDD. since 2007 there's been The Limits of Control, Only Lovers Left Alive, and Paterson. only saw the latter two but I know all three have their ardent fans. I hated Only Lovers Left Alive and didn't like Paterson but could see myself rewatching it in a year or something and loving it. that one has stuck with me, and the people I saw it with, more than most movies do.

Loved STP as a teenager, mainly because it completely fit with my parallel obsession with the aimless drifting of early Wenders (the blackouts between scenes are straight out of WW's 70's notebook). I don't remember much of STP except the vibe and how OLD it seemed, probably due to the grainy b&w and Screamin' Jay Hawkins. I should re-watch it.

“It's Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and he's a wild man, so bug off.”

Okay, so just saw The Dead Don't Die: shaggy dog laconic Jarmusch, just meta enough, hardly perfect but perfectly entertaining. One plotline left totally hanging but maybe that was the point.

looking forward to it

I think I like Down By Law as much as Stranger Than Paradise, Waits and Lurie had such amazing chemistry

seems clear by the end of the story that they will end up together even though they go their separate ways

I like how they try to outdo each other with their cool guy schticks. It's a funny take on their real life personas.

yes!

I'll meet up with you again in a wee whiley - in the cemetary!

Tilda’s all-right angle turns walking up to the police station had me cracking up

Loved this

A black comedy of the anthropocene (polar fracking screwing with the Earth's tilt and rotation is intriguing and timely). Tilda Swinton's otherworldly performance is delightful. But I can only say "Meh" to the rest of the film.

I liked it ok, but wasn't really on board with the repetitiveness of some of the jokes. There were people in the theater who laughed out loud the third time the Sturgill Simpson song played though, so maybe I'm the weird one. It was a good song, so hopefully I'll stop being sick of it already sooner or later. I don't know - I haven't actually seen a Jarmusch movie since the early 2000s, so maybe I just need to reacquaint myself with the feel of his other work. Everybody's performances were excellent though.

And there was obviously a lot of bleak social commentary about climate change and materialism and racism, but I was kinda left wondering how it all tied together.

Yeah this was pretty much exactly what I was prepared for & expecting – a totally light, silly, largely aimless goof, mostly just an excuse to enjoy the screen presence of a bunch of interesting performers, which I’m totally fine with.

My only real nitpicks were that I didn’t like the meta stuff between Murray and Driver, especially the ‘script’ routines at the end – ymmv but I hate kind of schtick, reminds me of bad 90s mel brooks movies. Was honestly kind of surprised that Jarmusch would do such a corny & overdone gag like that, but w/e. The only one of those bits I liked was when Bill Murray snapped “are we improvising?”, which made me laugh, but mostly due to his delivery.

Also weird that the plotline with the three teens in blue goes nowhere (Ned I assume this is what you were referring to upthread?). Unless I missed something, did the reappear in the finale or something?

I generally hate how streaming TV has sucked up so much film talent over the last bunch of years, but watching this I thought that this mode of Jarmusch would be kind of a perfect fit for that medium – I can totally imagine enjoying something like this movie extended over twelve 30min episodes or whatever, just a total no-stakes Andy Griffith-style ramble through a weird town with an endless succession of character actors and celeb cameos doing charming little scenes, interrupted by occasional zombie attacks, with no real plot to resolve or anything.

it felt like Jarmusch’s version of one of those comedy films that parodies a genre, scary movie or whatever

i read a comment about how the zombies seeking out things from their life was poorly done and i’m like... that’s the joke?

i read a comment about how the zombies seeking out things from their life was poorly done and i’m like... that’s the joke?

Shawn of the Dead did much better with the metaphor of zombies as people going blindly through their lives.

Also weird that the plotline with the three teens in blue goes nowhere

Unless they're somewhere in the final zombie melee, their plot was left hanging. Could they have been a Stranger Things shoutout (difficulty: I haven't seen ST)?

No, not a Stranger Things shoutout to be sure.

It stood out that this small sleepy town that seemed to have a population of about twelve would have this crowded juvenile detention center with roided-out skinhead guards.

i read a comment about how the zombies seeking out things from their life was poorly done and i’m like... that’s the joke?

― mh, Monday, June 17, 2019 12:37 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's been 40 years since Dawn of the Dead and the whole "zombie people wandering blindly from day-to-day at things like malls" thing. I think a zombie Iggy looking for coffee is a real funny version of it. I think zombies wandering around going "wi-fiiii" "blueee-toooth" is too close to trenchant WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY DO U SEE for my personal comfort, but I can't exactly blame a 66 year old for not being on my level of internet irony

see also movie geek gas station guy DRINKIN A DEW

xxp I dunno, giant crowded detention centers are pretty much a main industry of sleepy small town America at this point honestly

I guess the whole "zombies are sheeple" thing was the OG Dawn of the Dead, and the "Zombies gravitate to what they like" thing is a little more contemporary

Either way, I recall seeing a zombie try to hit a tamborine with no drum in one of the '00s Romero reboots maybe?

I once wanted to start a zombie sludge-noise band called BRAINS that was just us pawing at our instruments and sounding like Flipper or something.

I was getting ready to roll my eyes at the DO U SEE element of Buscemi's red hat, but the grammatical nonsense of "keep america white again" actually made me laugh so I gotta hand it to him

yeah, that is a good gag

I thought it was trying for trenchant-as-lol tbh

Buscemi was the racist guy because a bunch of these movies have a stereotypical racist asshole guy!

so many of the scenes seemed like "well, we've got to have a lazy guy, and some kind of commentary about how we're all truly zombies in society, and we need to have some obvious reference to Romero films, but we're going to sabotage it by outright telling the audience it's a REAL GEORGE ROMERO CAR"

then there were the things that were just gags, like Driver's character driving a smart

I once wanted to start a zombie sludge-noise band called BRAINS that was just us pawing at our instruments and sounding like Flipper or something.

― space invaders are smokin penises!!!! (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, June 17, 2019 11:16 AM (thirty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

down for this

That was like 06/07/08? Man, I would have beaten epic bacon Ron Swanson Internet to the punch somewhat and could have been making FAT CASH by now

I like that idea as inscrutable as it is

I’m in Los Angeles area now, I could probably hook up some people who know how to do sick zombie makeup and just play gigs at like Fantastic Fest and cons or whatever

I guess the whole "zombies are sheeple" thing was the OG Dawn of the Dead, and the "Zombies gravitate to what they like" thing is a little more contemporary

"Zombies gravitate to what they like" definitely comes from the OG Dawn of the Dead - it's why the zombies are surrounding the shopping mall - somebody even says, "This place was important to them".

Yeah this was pretty much exactly what I was prepared for & expecting – a totally light, silly, largely aimless goof, mostly just an excuse to enjoy the screen presence of a bunch of interesting performers, which I’m totally fine with.

― One Eye Open, Monday, June 17, 2019 10:20 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Accurate assessment of the movie but I'm not fine with JJ phoning it in like this. I mean, why bother? There's half a dozen stars, a decent setup, tone was good, but this went NOWHERE. rehashed everything Dawn of the Dead had to say 41 years ago plus "wiiiifiiiii" / "bluuuuuuetoooooooth." not looking for trenchant social commentary from him, but christ, punch the script up, give these great actors something to do.

definitely better than Stranger Than Paradise though

:)

haven't seen it but wasn't its devolution into grim stasis meant to be intentional, a reflection of our current world? I thought I remember Nicholas Rapold and Amy Taubin talking about it in one of the Cannes podcasts

remembered

nice

"grim stasis" is not only generous but inaccurate, it's not grim, it's too cute to ever be grim. I found this frustrating because the actors are all great, setup is good, and that's it... the tone is great, a mix of his last two movies Paterson (didn't like at the time but has really grown on me) and Only Lovers Left Alive (which I hated). really too many stars that are given short shrift. I don't think it succeeds as commentary since it's all reheated DOTD with nothing new. Everything in this movie is left unexplored. I liked the meta stuff, but fuck, go further with it! the grammatical joke with Buscemi's hat was great. wish the cast was pared down or it was longer, leaving the juvie kids hanging is a bizarre choice.

ok, will have to see it

I don't think it succeeds as commentary since it's all reheated DOTD with nothing new.

To Dan S's point, it's 'Dawn of the Dead' but the new part is responding to a zombie attack with grim resignation and droll irony

He's been phoning it in for a long time

I loved Paterson and Broken Flowers!

was ambivalent about Only Lovers Left Alive but I think I would like it if I saw it again

Only Lovers Left Alive is the only one I sort of liked. Dead Man is the last film of his I genuinely loved.

I don't think it succeeds as commentary since it's all reheated DOTD with nothing new.
To Dan S's point, it's 'Dawn of the Dead' but the new part is responding to a zombie attack with grim resignation and droll irony

― space invaders are smokin penises!!!! (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, June 18, 2019 10:46 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it sounds good on paper... and ilx...

This was fun until about the halfway point

sayin

I hated Only Lovers Left Alive so much it almost put me off Jarmusch completely, largely because it was so serious and portentous but had basically nothing to back it up, idea-wise.

This worked for me bc it was self aware of how inessential it was imho, just sort of a collection of vignettes & variations on a theme. The Jarmusch film I'd compare it to the most would be Mystery Train - nothing really going on intellectually, but just an enjoyable collection of actors & scenery. I can see being disappointed if you expected more or thinking that its a good cast wasted etc, but I don't think it would have been improved by giving any of the actors a chance to really show their chops or anything.

Similarly, I took the politics and social commentary stuff as basically just being in there as a superficial nod to genre tropes. Like obviously he hates trump & global warming and stuff but I dont think theres much to unpack there tbh

Paterson was NOT a phone-in.

saw Dead Don't Die yesterday and i think it's interesting to think about, but not exactly recommendable as a movie to watch. it doesn't work very well as a horror-comedy (for me) - it's never scary, and the laughs, even the arch ones, are rare. but that seems to be the result of deliberate choices to create this dry, unhurried tone. less a nightmare than one of those unpleasant and boring dreams that loops back on itself and never goes anywhere. i think the idea is that's where we're at in the anthropocene, etc. ironic 80s/90s listlessness (personified by murray) arrives to the 2010s and finds more of the same; his cliche-spotting hipster descendants are equally doomed. BUT some hope still rests with the self-motivated, boundary-refusing teens. optimistic, if in an oldster "i guess we failed, but maybe you kids will succeed" sort of way. anyway i think this is why the juvenile offenders vanish/escape from the movie.

the more overt touches of wackiness may unfortunately act as red herrings, giving the impression wants to be an over-the-top zany thing and is just failing at it. which isn't as interesting so i'd rather not dwell on it.

with the exception of the expenditure on decent zombie makeup, it might be one of the laziest movies I've ever seen

if it wasn't Jarmusch I'd say it'd take a lot of effort to *appear* to be that lazy

The only big lol besides tiny car i had was those Sturgill Simpson cds being 12.99 when they had one song on them

just saw Dead Man for the first time, I liked it but it not nearly as much as Stranger Than Paradise or Down By Law

it was beautiful as all of his films are, but it didn't seem as inspired to me. maybe I need to see it again in a couple of years

I wasn't expecting much from Mystery Train or Night on Earth as short story anthologies, but I loved them both

this was great until it was bad but i dont think ill let the swing to the latter affect my enjoyment of the former

Dead Don't Die was about as ill-conceived as a movie could be: a meta Romero homage with designs on trenchant social commentary about as deep as the "This is fine" dog cartoon that mostly exists to give a director I once loved license to indulge in all his worst tics. I guess it looks like everyone involved is having a good time but man, I was mostly just bored. It's definitely the kind of movie designed so that everyone walks away with one singular chuckle, mine was the surprisingly nerdy shot across the bow at "Farmer Frank Miller".

saw Limits of Control yesterday and really liked it, though it would have worked even better with less dialogue imo (esp. the awful Swinton scene)

As I posted on the ILF thread

I just saw "the dead dont die" and I cant work out if I hated it, or it was really clever and dryly witty. I mean I'll happily watch Adam Driver drly remark "this is gonna end badly" on a loop for 2 hours, and the reviews make me think I missed something, but... enh?

― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Monday, September 2, 2019 10:00 AM bookmarkflaglink

That's how i felt

sturgill simpson. good song.

just saw Dead Man for the first time, I liked it but it not nearly as much as Stranger Than Paradise or Down By Law

saw it in a smaller room of a multiplex with surprisingly great sound, loved it & told my friends on the way out I would probably never see it again bcz it would be so underwhelming not being surrounded & shaken by the guitar

have no interest in Young as a musician otherwise either

(I’ve mostly seen Jarmusch on VHS or broadcast TV otherwise. Night On Earth, Ghost Dog, and either the Joie & Cinque Lee or the Tom & Iggy Coffee & Cigarettes were big screen too afair, maybe one or two others.)

re: the Dead Man soundtrack, I hope to see it on a theater screen at some point

finally saw The Dead Don’t Die. I don’t really know zombie movies so it’s hard for me to evaluate it outside of the context of Jarmusch films

would have thought having recently watched the others again I would like this less, but I really enjoyed it

It was dull

First half good

I think maybe being immersed in Jarmusch films but not zombie films made me like it more

Could be. I am very zombie filmed out

good song

it's the theme song.

I lasted about 20 minutes with The Dead Don't Die

you didn't miss anything

You missed a lot of references to Sturgill Simpson

made Paterson look like a masterpiece in comparison

that's a movie that's stuck with me despite not thinking much of it at the time - I bet it'll be the consensus late career pick for him when all is said and done.

Paterson was a better film, but I thought this was funny and I liked the way it looked. Was reminded that Amy Taubin spoke about the ‘radioactive’ quality of Frederick Elmes’ cinematography in the night-time scenes. The soundtrack by Jarmusch and Carter Logan was good too.

Elmes' cinematography in Paterson was also great

There were a couple Paterson jokes in TDDD! Even if the execution fell flat, it's pretty clear Jarmusch felt like doing a film of lazy riffing after doing a "serious" movie

So wait theres not actually a ghost dog here or what

Am I the only person who was disappointed that Ghost Dog used a gun and not a samurai sword?

Several aging mafiosos also id say

Just watched Only Lovers...I enjoyed it well enough. It may grow on me in the next few days as I think about it. There's a cue in the score after Marlowe's death that I'd swear is a variation on the Stooges' "No Fun."

on Criterion?

Yeah, there's a new Jarmusch bundle with new arrivals OLLA and Coffee & Cigarettes, and Ghost Dog and Dead Man back for short engagements, plus the permanent library stuff.

In the last week i rewatched Mystery Train and Dead Man, partly out of curiosity because I hadn’t seen either in forever but loved them when they came out. I have to say Mystery Train didn’t really hold my attention. Maybe it’s a victim of its own influence, but the hipster riffs and in particular all the Elvis references felt a little rote. I did love the depiction of Memphis itself, and I didn’t dislike the film but it felt kind of pat.

Dead Man still rules, though. Just gorgeous, for one thing, and I think it’s grounded enough to carry all of its pretentions. The relationship between Blake and Nobody remains one of my favorite “buddy film” pairings.

I had the same reactions to both flicks, tipsy.