I searched for an earlier thread, but all I found was this one from 2003.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big fan of Jim Jarmusch’s films. For various reasons, I never catch them on the big screen, so I have some on DVD. I bought Coffee And Cigarettes three years ago. That’s right. Three years (less a month and a half). At first, I was working on an indie film and didn’t have time to watch it. Then I got a new job and left home for a year. Then I never seemed to be in the mood to watch it. Everyone who mentioned it said it was crap. Boring. Tonight I finally popped it into the DVD player. Well…
I liked it. First, B&W photography is beautiful. Second, Jarmush has nice shots. Third, the dialog is great. It’s the sort of mundane things people say when they’re hanging out. I like that. And the actors pull it off well.
I liked the segment called ‘Cousins?’ the best. That’s the one that got the biggest laugh out of me. (I won’t spoil it.)
IMDb lists 16 titles that he directed. Coffee And Cigarettes is listed four times, and Stranger Than Paradise is listed twice. So call it 12 films. I have Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, Mystery Train (Yay! Screamin’ Jay Hawkins!), Night On Earth (which is actually the first Jarmusch film I saw – Wait, did I see that one on the big screen? I think I did.), Dead Man, Ghost Dog, and Coffee And Cigarettes. (I also have Leningrad Cowboys Go America, in which Jarmusch appeared as a used car dealer.) So I still have to see Permanent Vacation, Year Of The Horse, Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet (segment), Broken Flowers, and the yet-to-be-released The Limits Of Control.
I looked for Permanent Vacation. Turns out it’s on the Criterion Collection’s Stranger Than Paradise two-disc DVD set. Of course my 9-year-old copy isn’t the Criterion one. I have a couple of people in mind to pass the old copy to, for inspiration. But not until my new copy arrives.
Fantastic movie! I need to see it again soon - I’ll probably stick it on my Tivo list and see if it comes up.
Saw it back in the theater when it first came out and sat behind possibly the two stupidest women in history who made baffled remarks the whole time. At the point when the “Tesla coil” was wheeled out they tittered “oh tee hee - Tesla coil!” then three minutes later: “Wait - is that a real thing?” :smack: :rolleyes: etc.
I went to this and I think I was the only person, or maybe one of two or three people in the audience. It’s the only time I had a movie stop and melt through. I liked it OK as far as I had gotten but felt no need to see the rest of it, I was so not caught up in it.
Tell me - if I hated the living hell out of Dead Man, will I or will I not like this movie? It’s an important question, as it’s coming up two movies hence on my boyfriend’s Netflix queue.
(Yes, I really liked Dead Man.) Coffee And Cigarettes is a series of eleven vignettes. The common theme is two people meeting over coffee and cigarettes and talking about things. Here’s what Wiki has to say:
I think they use ‘comic’ loosely. That is, you might think of it as a series of live action comic strips rather than a collection of comedies. (I did get some laughs out of it though.)
I tend to hang out (when I hang out) with people similar to ones who often appear in Jarmusch films, so I appreciate his films on that level. I also like the way he sets up his shots and scenes, and that he uses B&W a lot. I like that his characters say things that make you do a double-take, because that’s how people talk. I like how he comes up with slightly unusual situations. Like in the Jack Shows Meg His Tesla Coil segment. I mean, you have this guy who invites a girl to meet him at a coffee shop so she can show him the Tesla coil he made.
