Coffee
and Cigarettes (Smokescreen Films)
Review by Sparrow
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If the name Jarmusch is involved with a film, I automatically have incredibly high expectations. Jim has directed some of the best movies in the past two decades, including two of my favourites "Down by Law" and "Night on Earth". His directing and writing is a tad off the wall for your standard movie goer though. His latest movie though may disappoint the hardcore Jarmusch fan, as well as the average person who checks it out for the star value of the people involved.
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| "Coffee and Cigarettes" has great potential but suffers from being altogether too slow during the first half of the movie. It is a series of vignettes where people are relating over coffee and cigarettes (clever title). The choices for those that are interacting is the key element of the movie. Jim has taken a fairly odd mixture of people and thrown them together to see what kind of chemistry can come of it. Well, at times sparks do fly...and then others it is quite the opposite. |
You have
to keep in mind, prior to watching this movie, that the vignettes
are supposed to build upon one another. If you |
Two of the most intruiging people in music and Jarmusch couldn't get them to say anything even remotely interesting. |
| Benigni, Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, and Steven Wright each have very distinct personalities that Jim Jarmusch has trouble bringing out on film. Their vignettes become tired very quickly. |
| Half way through and then...BAM...it gets interesting. And it's strange that it suddenly does when more popular people in modern entertainment are used. It's almost like a passing of the torch, only it doesn't show any respect to that previous generation of greats. The White Stripes, GZA, RZA, Bill Murray, Steve Coogan and Alfred Molina got an incredible amount to work with, while the previous ones had nothing. |
If Jarmusch could have put a bit more effort into the first half of the movie it would have easily been one of his better films (and quite unique in movie history). But instead it would just be hell for most people to sit through it to get to the interesting tidbits. Of course, there will be a few pretentious wankers that will tell me that "I don't get it". Luckily, their opinion means about |
If you say Bill Murray's name one more time I'm going to go wu-tang on both of your asses. |
| as much to me as a festering pile of dog shit...so I'm comfortable in stating that this movie was a large disappointment. What else can you expect when less than a 1/3 of the vignettes are slightly entertaining. |
| Rating: 2/7 |