Movie Polls

What is your favorite movie directed by Jim Jarmusch?

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Jim Jarmusch's latest release The Limits of Control is having a limit release very shortly here.  I'm quite excited to see it as Jarmusch is one of my very favorite directors.  I'm curious to see what he does in the thriller genre.  Another of my fovorite directors Hal Hartley who sometimes gets thrown in similar categories as Jarmusch did a fantastic job with his take on the genre with the recent Fay Grim, so I have some hope.  Anyone else here a big Jarmusch fan?

Please vote only once in each poll.

Movies referenced in this poll:
Broken Flowers
Coffee and Cigarettes
Dead Man
Down By Law
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Mystery Train
Night on Earth
Permanent Vacation
Stranger Than Paradise
Year of the Horse

Re:What is your favorite movie directed by Jim Jarmusch?

Out of the films I've seen (Broken Flowers, Stranger Than Paradise & Coffee and Cigarettes) I'd have to go with Coffee and Cigarettes. I was never a coffee drinker or social smoker until I got to college and got swept up in the whole late night coffee shop study group session culture that I'm sure every college town has. After graduating, I swore off espresso as my addiction had gotten completely out of control (at my worst I was drinking a good 16 shots a night) which led to countless nights of insomnia. Thankfully I've learned to control my urge for espresso and have once again returned to my local coffee shops where I can now enjoy a single Americano and utilize the free Wi-Fi to do all my internet workings. With that said, Coffee and Cigarettes was the only Jarmusch film that I could really get in to. The meandering conversations of pseudo-intellectuals about this and that in the dark, smoky corners of java huts was instantly relatable.

Re:What is your favorite movie directed by Jim Jarmusch?

Hal Hartley is another director with whom I must withhold any real discussion about due to the fact that I have only seen No Such Thing and Fay Grim. I liked both of them (I know I would probably have loved Fay Grim if I had seen Henry Fool since it is suppose to be a continuation of the story and characters from that film) so I'm hoping that I'll get around to seeing more of both Jarmusch and Hartley in the near future.

Re:What is your favorite movie directed by Jim Jarmusch?

I voted for Broken Flowers 'cause I just watched it last night and loved it. I kind think that it may do for me what Darjeeling Limited did though. DL was the first Wes Anderson film that I loved right off the bat. Since then, I've revisited his films and fallen head over hills for most of them.. Jarmusch has always been a director that I liked but never loved but I felt like I kinda "got" him (for lack of a better term) more so with Broken Flowers than I have with his other films. I now have a feeling like I want to revisit his other stuff and see if I like them more than the first go round.... But I'm not sure, Broken Flowers also really made me wanna re-watch Lost In Translation so maybe it's just Bill mutha-$%%in' Groundhog Day Murray.

Re:What is your favorite movie directed by Jim Jarmusch?

Risselada:

Please reference this thread for the rules of this group.

Jim Jarmusch's latest release The Limits of Control is having a limit release very shortly here.  I'm quite excited to see it as Jarmusch is one of my very favorite directors.  I'm curious to see what he does in the thriller genre.  Another of my fovorite directors Hal Hartley who sometimes gets thrown in similar categories as Jarmusch did a fantastic job with his take on the genre with the recent Fay Grim, so I have some hope.  Anyone else here a big Jarmusch fan?

I've only seen five of these but count myself as a Jim Jarmusch fan (wow, he did a Neil Young concert flick??  I'm sadly behind the times).  Of the five, as much as I liked the other four, the choice was easy:  Dead Man got my vote.  It's funny and surreal and odd and great.  Love the cast.   (The other four I've seen are Broken Flowers, Coffee & Cigarettes, Down By Law and Stranger Than Paradise.)

I really do need to check the others out.

Re:What is your favorite movie directed by Jim Jarmusch?

I've only seen two, Coffee and Cigarettes and Broken Flowers, and I picked the latter one.  While I haven't seen enough of Jarmusch's films (or liked the ones I have seen all that much) to call myself a fan, Bill Murray in that role, or in any role for that matter, immediately gave the film cool points for me.  I didn't much like Coffee and Cigarettes, as I recall, though Bill was my favorite part.

Re:What is your favorite movie directed by Jim Jarmusch?

I think I'm the first person to vote for an 80s Jarmusch film so far, that's a little scary. I've actually seen all of Jim's films so this is a really tough poll. Mystery Train would be my personal pick, it's probably not his best film but I can watch it endlessly. I saw The Limits of Control last weekend and I really enjoyed it - but I get the feeling a lot of people won't know what to make of it. Jarmusch is displaying his Antonioni and Rivette influences much more directly than he ever has before, letting location, pace and repetition take precedent over telling a proper narrative. If you've seen the trailer then you've seen just about the whole storyline, and every frame of the film with a gun, but with much of Jim's work it's more about the journey than the destination. I once got the chance to meet Jim at a Broken Flowers promotional event, he was really nice and we talked for almost 20 minutes. I normally feel pretty well versed in films, but next to him I felt like the kid who tries to reference Star Wars in film school.

Re:What is your favorite movie directed by Jim Jarmusch?

protexblue:

I think I'm the first person to vote for an 80s Jarmusch film so far, that's a little scary. I've actually seen all of Jim's films so this is a really tough poll. Mystery Train would be my personal pick, it's probably not his best film but I can watch it endlessly. I saw The Limits of Control last weekend and I really enjoyed it - but I get the feeling a lot of people won't know what to make of it. Jarmusch is displaying his Antonioni and Rivette influences much more directly than he ever has before, letting location, pace and repetition take precedent over telling a proper narrative. If you've seen the trailer then you've seen just about the whole storyline, and every frame of the film with a gun, but with much of Jim's work it's more about the journey than the destination. I once got the chance to meet Jim at a Broken Flowers promotional event, he was really nice and we talked for almost 20 minutes. I normally feel pretty well versed in films, but next to him I felt like the kid who tries to reference Star Wars in film school.

Ha!  That's a great analogy there at the end.  Read or heard Jim rattle off an impromptu list of some of his influences (maybe on the Down By Law DVD special features??).  The list was actually gigantic and features as many authors, books, musicians, and other types of artists as it did films and filmmakers.  And I felt like he could have kept going for hours naming these things off.  I feel like he really absorbs a lot of interesting and diverse art from around the world and history.

For a while my favorite was Down By Law, but I think in recent viewings Night on Earth is my new favorite.  Maybe it's the Tom Waits musical scores that push them to the very top of my favorites list.  And may be Night on Earth the most since Jim just seems very adept at vignette films.  Even many of his films with a single narrative feel like little separate moments.

I have seen all of his films except for The Year of the Horse.  I've just never become a huge Neil Young fan.  Not that I dislike him.  Would you say that Jarmusch's stamp is on this doc nonetheless?

Re:What is your favorite movie directed by Jim Jarmusch?

Risselada:

I have seen all of his films except for The Year of the Horse.  I've just never become a huge Neil Young fan.  Not that I dislike him.  Would you say that Jarmusch's stamp is on this doc nonetheless?

I've only watched it once, and not being a Neil Young fan either, I didn't get much out of it. It spends more time covering Crazy Horse play through whole songs than on the more interesting interviews and backstage footage (including some vintage footage not shot by Jim). The only thing that makes it a Jim Jarmusch film is his usual inversion of genre traditions, this time the concert film, by covering the shows with 8mm B&W without cranes or extra lighting. As I understand it, Jim basically got to know Neil Young after the Dead Man score and was asked to cover one of Crazy Horse's shows for the hell of it on Neil's dollar. After that the project just kept rolling completely funded by Young, so Jarmusch was basically on tour with one of his favorite bands and this is his scrapbook - if you look at it that way it's not so bad.

Re:What is your favorite movie directed by Jim Jarmusch?

I went ahead and voted Stranger Than Paradise because it hadn't received any love and I really loved the film. It's overbearing meaninglessness really struck a chord with me, although Down by Law did the same and I didn't like it as much. Dead Man is another favorite because it's probably the weirdest of all the films of his I've seen (Night on Earth, Coffee and Cigarettes, Down by Law, Stranger than Paradise, Permanent Vacation), and I loved the Neil Young score.

Cool poll, man. I would consider myself a fan of his, although I've yet to see his entire body of work.