Jim Jarmusch is a director who has helped to define the modern independent film. His films are always interesting, often brilliant and possess a unique combination of minimalism, deadpan humor and keen observation about the human condition. What follows are brief descriptions of some of Jarmusch’s better-known films. While I have seen all of these, … Continue reading Jim Jarmusch: Indie Film Pioneer
Kwik Stop was released in 2001 but, despite winning several film festival awards, didn’t get much attention or distribution. It’s recently been added to Amazon Prime, so hopefully it will get a wider audience, which it truly deserves. A Slate article by Charles Taylor argues that the lack of fanfare around Kwik Stop reveals everything … Continue reading Kwik Stop: Low Key, Overlooked Indie Film Now on Amazon Prime
An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn (2018), directed by indie British filmmaker Jim Hosking, is a bizarre, absurdist comedy currently streaming on Netflix. Like Hosking’s first feature film, The Greasy Strangler, An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn premiered at Sundance. The Plot, Such As It Is The protagonist, Lulu (Aubrey Plaza, who generally stars in … Continue reading An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn: Absurdist Comedy
The Bill Murray Stories: Life Lessons Learned From a Mythical Man is a documentary on Netflix about a curious phenomenon involving the comic actor who’s reinvented himself as a kind of trickster guru over the last decade. “Bill Murray sightings” have been reported for many years. These are seemingly random incidents where Murray appears in … Continue reading Bill Murray Stories on Netflix
The title Entertainment is ironic, as it’s about someone who calls himself an entertainer but is anything but. Director Rick Alverson, whose previous work includes another darkly comic film, actually named The Comedy (2012), here attempts the thankless task of presenting an unlikable, often repulsive protagonist as he alienates everyone around him and eventually loses the … Continue reading Entertainment (2015) -directed by Rick Alverson
Frances Ha (2012) Director: Noah Baumbach Frances Ha, the latest film from director Noah Baumbach, whose earlier films include Kicking and Screaming, The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding and Greenberg, can be seen as a revisiting of territory made familiar by Woody Allen decades ago. The fact that Frances Ha was shot … Continue reading Frances Ha: Woody Allen For the New Generation?
The Future is the second feature film directed by Miranda July, best known for Me and You and Everybody We Know (2005). While the latter was a popular and well received indie film, The Future is even more offbeat and challenging to mainstream viewers. Nevertheless, it’s well worth watching if you can appreciate movies that … Continue reading The Future -Written and Directed by Miranda July
Jim Jarmusch’s 1991 ensemble comedy turns a gimmick into a revelation. The story begins in Los Angeles one evening at 7:07 p.m. A talent agent (Gena Rowlands) gets into the back of a taxi driven by a sullen, chain-smoking young woman (Winona Ryder), and over the course of their bumpy conversation, Rowlands’s character becomes convinced … Continue reading Night on Earth – Criterion Collection
Jim Jarmusch has been the cinema’s deadpan poet of lives in transit, from his breakthrough feature Stranger Than Paradise (1984) to Broken Flowers (2005). Limits of Control pretty much consists of deadpan and transit as it follows–make that contemplates–the mission of an enigmatic hitman through some picturesque but sparsely populated corners of Spain. Whom this … Continue reading The Limits of Control
This disappointment from Jim Jarmusch stars Johnny Depp in a mystery-Western about a 19th-century accountant named William Blake, who spends nearly all his money getting to a hellish mud town in the old West and ends up penniless and doomstruck in the wilderness. A benevolent if goofy Native American (Gary Farmer) takes an interest in … Continue reading Dead Man