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[Jim Bowie]

I just got through with Coffee and Cigarettes, a movie by Jim Jarmusch (Sling Blade, Ghost Dog). It's basically a character study of characters sitting around talking over coffee and cigarettes.

This could very well be one of my least favorite movies. It's bland, pointless, unoriginal, drab, and worst of all, poorly casted. I haven't seen so many celebrities in such a bad movie since, well, Celebrity.

Ensue spoilers:

Spoiler

There are a few ups to the movie. The Jack/Meg White scene where Jack builds a Tesla coil is great. I loved his tangent about how amazing Tesla was. Tom Waits pretending to be a doctor was great. Steve Buscemi was horribly misused, but still sort of humorous. RZA, GZA, and Bill Murray's scene was great until they FUCKING KILLED BILL MURRAY. And GZA clowned on caffeine... what a joick. They also had a Tom Waits song, two Parliment songs, and a Skatalites song.

The downs smother the goods. Every other scene in the movie was slow, drab, and unwitty. They seemed to be reading off cards to the side, that's how wooden they are. Sometimes, I was begging for the movie's ending. I complained maybe three or four times to Manabanana that suicide was preferable to this flick. All of the other music sucked and/or was unremarkable.

Seriously, don't see this movie. There's really no high point. It's all rambling bullshit, and it makes for a terrible character study. Save yourself the 2 dollars and rent something worthwhile.

 

[sefskillz]

I just got through with Coffee and Cigarettes, a movie by Jim Jarmusch (Sling Blade, Ghost Dog).

He didn't do Sling Blade, although he did have a cameo. He did, however, give us Down By Law, Stranger Than Paradise, Dead Man, Night on Earth and Mystery Train... all of which I'm a huge fan of. I'm not going to try to convince you that you're wrong, I just couldn't let your opinion stand for everyone to see without any kind of rebuttal

With that said, I loved Coffee and Cigarettes.. I saw it twice in theatres and bought the DVD on release. One thing that you didn't mention is that the movie was filmed over a period of 17 years, the sketches are pretty much in chronological order spanning almost the entire career of Jarmusch. I enjoyed the conversations so much, I pretty much had a smile on my face the entire time. Maybe it's hit or miss in that aspect, in whether the charm of the film gets to you or not. I'm not going to deny that a few fall flat (the one with

Spoiler

spike lee's siblings and buscemi for instance, and the two black guys with the troubled past that keep saying that same thing

), but there are so many high points for me (

Spoiler

Benigni/Wright, Renee, Blanchett, Pop/Waits, Meg/Jack, Murray/RZA/GZA, Janitors and Molina/Coogan

). Most surprising of all, to me, was that you didn't like the soundtrack overall. I thought it was a blast, it's such a great blend of different genre's from the 50's and on that I thought anyone could appreciate it.

The movie just isn't for everyone.

 

[RaymondCarver]

Coffee and Cigarettes is a horrible film. Stay away. Booring, pretensious, and full of itself. I've seen better movies involving coffee shops. Bill Murry's part did not justify the cost of renting it plus late fees.

 

[BigGreenMat]

I agree I saw this the other night. HUGELY disappointing. The conversations are hardly engaging at all. Mostly every scene is someone bitching about coffee and cigarettes being bad for lunch and a toast with coffee. Just terrible.

 

[way more]

I'm not going to deny that a few fall flat

Spoiler

(the one with spike lee's siblings and buscemi for instance, and the two black guys with the troubled past that keep saying that same thing)

Those were two of my favorites. You guys astound me.