Anticipate "Limits of Control", the new Jim Jarmusch film starring Isaach de Bankolé, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Gael García Bernal, and John Hurt.

have filmmakers forgotten how to title things? LIMITS OF CONTROL! Sounds like a straight-to-cable Eric Roberts movie.

ok, the "The" makes it sound more like John Updike (still not nec a good thing).

It's called context, Mr. Roeper.

COLD

^^ good film title

it will probably have a good soundtrack.

haha

Dude, Eric Roberts is hot again. Who else ya got? Michael Pare? Andrew Stevens?

I loved "Coffee and Cigarettes" though, and "Broken Flowers" is among his three best movies, so I'm still looking forward to this.

^^ blistering insanity

What do you mean?

he means you are insane

and covered in blisters

goole OTM

Ghost Dog rules

Otm. Forrest Whitaker >>>>>>> Bill Murray.

According to IMDb this movie is already in post-production, but it's hard to find any information on it. Besides the stuff on the IMDB page, all I could find is this very vague Tilda Swinton interview:

Apparently this was shot by Chris Doyle, which sounds promising. And Jarmusch is still the best living American movie director, so my expectations are quite high.

information does seem to be pretty scant, which suits me, but in general jarmusch matters, the guy who ran the great old tripod site with all jim's picks and various film stuff to read through has updated it, http://www.jim-jarmusch.net/, and has a jarmusch blog here. i'm pretty jazzed to see the new one; isaach de bankole is one of my favourites; the rest seem quite a strange mix, and generally something new with it being in spain, but i'm definitely curious.

i'm keen to see the chris doyle effect on this - i'm assuming it'll be more a la paranoid park, as i can't imagine any of his other styles jiving with jarmusch's aesthetic. i thought broken flowers was pretty strange, as it was jarmusch moving towards embracing things like the (slightly-closer) close up, real titles, and other un-austere things he's long rejected.

i find it pretty hard to get excited about a new jim jarmusch movie these days.

Did you Broken Flowers?

haha

im excited no prob

(actual answer to what i assume is the question: i couldn't rouse myself to see it)

u didnt see broken flowers - it was pretty good

You should see Broken Flowers, it's the best thing he's done in ages.

omg so not true

Well, I did enjoy it more than any film of his since Night on Earth. Not that Dead Man and Coffee & Cigarettes weren't both good movies (and Ghost Dog had many good things in it too), but BF was simply better.

so u liked night on earth better than dead man and ghost dog

okay no way is broken flowers better than dead man crazy crazy crazy talk

broken flowers was ok i guess

dead man is pretty much my favoritest movie

so u liked night on earth better than dead man and ghost dog

Yes. I thought DM and GD both had interesting themes, but they ran with them for a bit too long, so they stretched kinda thin. Jarmusch seems to be at his best when he does episode films, or at least episodic films, like Broken Flowers is.

coffee & cigarettes is like 90% terrible. night on earth is like 40% terrible.

dead man is pretty much awesome.

ghost dog is pretty bad too

Okay, if you thought Coffee & Cigarettes was terrible, I don't think we'll ever agree on Jarmusch. I thought a couple of the episodes were not that good (especially the one with White Stripes), but most of it was quite good. The Cate Blanchett episode and the closing episode were among the best things he's ever done.

cate blanchett & alfred molina ones were great, the rest was pretty half-assed

omg! bill murray and the rza are talking!!! isnt that lolarious

ive never seen dead man but ghost dog was pretty c-o-r-n-y

u better take that back and see dead man asap

coffee and cigarettes is good but with strange forays into meditations on fame, ie white stripes cate blanchett etc. the good parts - alf molina, taylor mead, renee, lees and buscemi - are awesome though. and yeah, can not understand how anyone is criticising dead man. jonathan rosenbaum's book on it's excellent reading too - the intertextualities and sorta native american in jokes (the tobacco bit) are worth reading about.

broken flowers just seemed slightly unsuccessful to me. i like it, and think it's in parts - the hippie girlfriend, skewering carrots, visiting the grave - excellent, but i guess it's the downside of how his stuff's so often good in a very slight, almost lucky way: like i can't think of an explanation for how a lot of mystery train works, or could be written confidently envisaging its translation to film, because it's so sketchy and funny and unconventional. and i guess sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. it didn't seem to with the lolita bit for me.

the next one seems as if he's going for a genre movie, a kind of heist thing maybe, which goes back to the dead man thing of using the framework of a genre/western for other purposes.

screening in may, at cannes i guess

http://www.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/thelimitsofcontrol/

looks hot. <3 chris doyle

I love Bankole.

"Soundtrack contains music by SUNN O))) & Boris, Boris and Earth." hahaha

RATED R FOR GRAPHIC NUDITY AND SOME LANGUAGE

this is an interesting film

variety review ripped this apart lol at flagrant hipsterism

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117940105.html?categoryid=31&cs=1

Worst of all, it just feels tired and recycled -- the referencing of Rimbaud and Blake, the flagrant hipsterism that here falsifies rather than refreshes, the self-conscious plunking down of all manner of foreign actors in unlikely contexts, the above-it-all attitude toward connecting on a human level. And then there's the music, mostly by a Japanese electronic noise outfit called Boris, that drones on ultimately to congeal into a state of undead rigor mortis.

is flagrant hipsterism a five-yard or a 10-yard penalty?

All these reviews keep saying it's mediocre but describe it in a way that makes me really want to see it.

I watch Jarmusch films no matter what. Except Coffee and Cigarrettes (so far.)

Whoop, there's an extra "is" after "Dead Man", scratc that.

I didn't have that reaction to Ghost Dog at all in terms of hipsterism or coolness points. I think lots of people can relate to the desire to nostalgically live by a masculine code of ethics from the "days of old", where people "had ethics", that frankly never existed but now is mythical. You know, compared to the so-called messed-up days we live in now/always live in the present. It's a pretty commonplace feeling, I think.

Not to attack unjustly, but I find it strange that you see Ghost Dog as too hipster, but you're totally cool with Coffee & Cigarettes which is probably the worst thing he's done in that regard? (Disclaimer- I actually like Night on Earth, Dead Man, Ghost Dog pretty equally well, C&G is a mixed bag, the best parts were the Blanchett and Molina bits).

it is a bit recycled but i enjoyed it anyway in no small part due to the soundtrack.

i did think for the first time, tho, about the role of women in his films.

how many hipsters will ask whether they are being told off in this btw?

I feel like Dead Man was his apex, everything before it was good to great, and everything after has been a horrible fall. I hated Broken Flowers, so I'm not really looking forward to this.

this is somewhat formally similar to dead man and ghost dog, but it's not as rich as either - more merely attractive (not that there's anything wrong with that), on the level of night on earth (and coffee and cigarettes?)

Violence, some crude language and Ms. de la Huerta in various states of undress.

just watched this. Was pretty caught up in the visuals/editing. Ms. De La Huerta's derriere >>> Alicia Keys' derriere.

this made someone's 10 of the decade list

was it rosenbaum?

not that i've seen -- one of the TimeOutNY guys

I would love to thank you for reviving this thread right now, because I really wanted to see this film and it never played locally, but I did not watch for it to be released on disc.

yeah the idea that this is purposively flagrantly hipster is kindof blowing my mind. i dont think it is, and if it is, it is not a good idea nonetheless (b/c it makes me so confused among them)

I never revisited this thread, it seems. Thoughts:

The Limits of Control is like a cinematic tone poem for some sort of off-screen work. I thought it was a success in terms of being evocative of moods and forms, while not necessarily ideas. The dialogue is completely inconsequential. I could buy arguments that it's trite, but it's used so sparingly that there's enough space for the ideas to breathe.

If nothing else, it is a beautiful music montage with Christopher Doyle cinematography and a Boris soundtrack.

(I actually was thinking about the film this morning after rewatching most of it yesterday, mostly the framing of shots and visual progression. I got partway through the thought "I wonder who the..." then realized, of course, the cinematographer was Doyle.)

Liked this, didn't love it; my first JJ. Wish I'd seen it on a big screen, in a theatre.

I somehow randomly saw like 15 mins of this without knowing what it was, and I was into it. I generally dig nicely shot films involving solitary male characters not talking for long stretches of time.

'Only Lovers Left Alive' is great, much funnier than I expected. Glad I saw it in a theater too (I don't really care about this sort of thing but it was a showing on 35mm).

his best film

hell no

hell yes

after years of aridness he finally wrote a good script and cast it shrewdly

It's on the very short list of JJ movies I'd ever be inclined to revisit, and that includes the ones I respect very much.

it's about vinyl geekdom, so surprise surprise

ha I forgot that was even in the movie

alfred i hope it is in some sense reassuring to know that seeing a terrible opinion with your name underneath at least feels fresh, unfamiliar, unsettling to me.

i liked this fine, & thought it had some very sweet passages, but it compares pretty unfavourably with a couple of the films he made like ... twenty, thirty years ago, according to very similar templates, with a better kinda gestalt-y cohesion of elements. the sober variety of mystery train, say - inhabiting dilapidated urban plazas at night, mapping lovers' trajectories while zigzagging into these little offshoot, genre-y subplots - just feels so much stronger (admittedly, with the benefit of some distance), more convincing & panoramic & unique. jarmusch still hasn't totally figured out working inside digital, yet, i don't think, & there's something just so concrete & strong about the grammar of those earlier films. the deadpan tone feels real. there's a kind of awkward, echoing lack of consideration to some of this film, i think - the sincerity of one of the character's deaths, late in the film, of fully celebrating Guys In Shades, of slipping into kinda brash concert footage at the show they visit - that makes me miss his evenness. it's a lovely film, & its romantic peaks are really memorable, but i can't see how it beats like, dead man in detuned originality, mystery train in singularity, down by law in fun, &c.

schlump otm

also we have a goddamn general Jarmusch thread

i can't see how it beats like, dead man in detuned originality, mystery train in singularity, down by law in fun, &c.

I think it does, especially in precisely what you said – beautifully – inhabiting dilapidated urban plazas at night, mapping lovers' trajectories.

but i can't see how it beats like, dead man in detuned originality, mystery train in singularity, down by law in fun, &c.

yeah these are top 3 for me, perplexed at prospect of him bettering any of those this late in his career but I guess its possible

feelin kinda Jarmusch-y lately, Limits of Control is the only one I haven't seen so far, I should get on that

Watched Ghost Dog last night for the first time in eons - it's pretty good but a bit clunky in places and feels like a step down (or an awkward sidestep?) from Dead Man, which I unabashedly adore. That Rosenbaum book is worth getting? I didn't even know there was one.

yeah it's really interesting, & nerdily kinda really added layers to my understanding/appreciation of the film. lots of just very satisfying dialogue w/ JJ, too, cool stories & stuff.

i remember having that experience rewatching ghost dog, thinking the broad mafia humour was kind of almost televisionish, & sometimes couldn't quite hold the weight of its like ... flava fav dialogue, while still being fun nonetheless. so many other satisfying strands of the film, though -- isaach de bankole, the little girl, gratuitious rza cameo & beautiful rza score, cool mysterious woman watching cartoons in limo, devestatingly probably the most recent use of forest whitaker's meditative quietness, &c&c&c

there's enough little bits in it to make it worthwhile, many of which I'd forgotten - the guy building a boat on his roof, for example. Or Forrest coming across the rednecks who have killed a bear. Gangsters always watching cartoons. All the stuff between de Bankole and Whittaker is classic Jarmusch.

my heart is warmed just remembering bankole/whittaker exchanges in that movie

haha yes all the repeated dialogue

wow LoC was terrible

yeah! it might be his absolute nadir.

the vampire one is pretty good! return to form, i guess.

though i tend to think stranger than paradise renders the rest of it fairly redundant.

as mh says upthread: it was a success in terms of being evocative of moods and forms, while not necessarily ideas.

it's just so ... empty. the style is there and it is gorgeous to look at but it's all in service of a script/plot that is woefully underdone and paper-thin, it's a bunch of gestures that add up to nothing, which is usually the opposite of how Jarmusch's best material works.

all of the "stars" getting their one-scene walk-ons felt like the hackiest way possible to give it any structure, and since we don't know or care about anyone involved in the exchanges (incl the nullity at the center of the action, about whom we never learn anything) they just feel cheap and pointless.

and the gestures feel pretty received and rote by this point.

jarmusch's films have always been about attitudinizing (jonathan rosenbaum's claims for "dead man's" profundity notwithstanding) and that kind of thing walks a thin line between indulgent and charming.

xpost

Rewatched this today. Only this time through I recognised the Stalker reference.

I have this image in my head of a room full of sand. And a bird flies towards me, and dips its wing into the sand. And I honestly have no idea whether this image came from a dream, or a film.

Really enjoyed it this time through.

Mostly hated the new one, not sure which is the right thread

Tom Waits and Vicky Krieps I liked at least, along with some of the musical selections. Everything else was DOA.

I bought Limits Of Control on Blu-Ray a few years ago. I like it; it's Jarmusch's version of that morose George Clooney movie The American (which I also own). Movies you can watch with the sound off and not miss a thing.

The Limits of Control is one of my very favorite Jarmusch films. It's a poem, an angry political allegory and a hilarious send-up of a James Bond movie (all the basic elements of a James Bond movie are in it: fancy exotic locales, seductive woman who takes off her clothes, expensive suits for the protagonist - but because of the way they're arranged, the movie refuses to add up to one: he does sleep with the woman but he keeps his suit on, he goes to these locales and all he visits are museums and cafés, and I remember a gun but it's never, ever fired).

I'll probably see the new one when I get back into town.

Managed to see the new one today, and I actually liked it - the opening third could even work as a solid, excellent release on its own but taken with the additional parts, they all play off each other quite well. Very well constructed (playing up to his strengths as a “minimalist” where every detail ends up carrying a lot more weight) and richly observed. A modest achievement perhaps but I found it to be very sad, occasionally hilarious and ultimately moving.

The Limits of Control: my theory is that it is a very loose retelling of Don Quixote; de Bankole can kill Murray, but probably nothing will come of it.

Father Mother Sister Brother (now that the Oscar bait is finally rolling out to us in the provinces): Maybe it is about things parents don't and/or didn't tell their children. But how TF did this win at Venice, even allowing for Jarmusch's "minimalist" reputation? And did Rolex pay for this amount of product placement?

(I sat next to a viewer who I'm guessing had been dragged to the theater by his date. It was interesting to overhear a likely novice's view on Jarmusch.)

What parents keep from their children means something different with each family, but in each of those cases, it looked very telling in terms of how they raised their children and what their relationships are like.

Families can permanently bind together people who (in other circumstances) would never associate with each other. That means obligations to someone you find strange and can't really relate to, or it could mean accepting that the kids you've raised don't seem to share anything about you, as if none of you was passed down to them. Without giving too much away, I got that from the first part.

Then you have a parent who meticulously decorates their home and constructs soapy fantasies into best-selling novels...and doesn't allow her children to discuss her work. But everything they do, she gets to know and she asks (and probably judges). It comes off as a toxic form of control, and keeping her own life from them deepens that feeling. No surprise to see their visit end the way it did, I'd just want to get out of there too.

Third part involved two twins who are raised to have their independence. They don't even appear like usual movie twins because they're that independent - close but not clones of each other. Letting children lead their own lives also means respecting their privacy and their independence from their parents, and seeing the parents have this whole other life outside of their kids leaves the impression that they were mutually letting their kids live the way they wanted to live themselves, on their own terms without needing anyone's judgment or approval. That's what I got from the last part.

No doubt you are correct, it just felt like the way these things were expressed was pretty paint by numbers.

Paint by numbness even

Tom W and Vicky K both delivered, but the other performances I could take or leave.

Jonathan Rosenbaum on Father Mother Sister Brother