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

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.