Year: 2004

It’s kinda like improvisational jazz, a riffing on the downbeats of movies, this collection of short films by Jim Jarmusch. And like jazz — sez me, who’s not a big fan of most of the form — it’s not always successful, sometimes flowing smooth and funky and sometimes just clunking noise falling over itself. But when it’s good in *Coffee and Cigarettes,* it’s really, really good.

It’s like indulging in a monastic retreat in itself, exquisitely calm and beautifully restorative and pointedly observant about human nature and circles of life. From the moment we fade in and move slowly across that placid lake in that remote mountain valley toward the tiny Buddhist monastery floating on a raft, you’re no longer sitting in a movie theater but utterly enrapt, swept away to that place, the tinkling of the wind chimes in the breeze, the gentle rustling of the fresh spring leaves of the trees on the shores.

He’s a temperamental, moody musician who haunts dive bars and intones earnest, half spoken-word songs. She’s a shy, awkward mouse barely surviving her latest dead-end job serving hot dogs at a kiddie amusement park. Neither is likely to ever make a break from their depressing existence in the rural South. In a desperate, last-ditch effort … more…

The charming Leonor Watling’s turn as a neurotic wannabe writer saves this exercise in Almodóvarian family dynamics from deflating too early, but even she’s not enough to save the entire film from an uncomfortable combination of self-importance and too-airy casualness. When divorced Madrid pianist Sofía (Rosa María Sardà) announces to her three grown daughters that … more…

Anyone who writes and identifies oneself to others as a writer will invariably face this situation one day: A distant relation or a slightly annoying coworker or the guy sitting next to you on the plane who won’t shut up will insist that his life (or that of his uncle or grandmother or best friend’s dogwalker) is simply fascinating, and here’s the deal: He will tell you the story and you, the writer, will write it up, and you’ll both split the profits.

This is your brain on film school; this what happens when film students urgently determined to “be artistic” and “make a statement” are allowed near Final Draft and a camera. Or maybe this is just what happens when the director, Aaron Woodley, is David Cronenberg’s nephew, a close enough relation to think he shares some … more…