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

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.