Coffee and Cigarettes

We watched Jim Jarmusch's film Coffee and Cigarettes the other night, with a little bit of disappointment. Jarmusch is probably most well known for Night on Earth(1991), a great film that contains five separate vignettes, linked together only by the fact that each story begins in a taxi cab. This newest film uses the same concept of vignettes interconnected by something as seemingly inocuous as coffee and cigarettes, but this interconnectedness feels like a gimmick; many of the scenes feel contrived and unscripted. While Jarusch shoots the vignettes beautifully black and white, most of the stories were dull with a few notable exceptions: Cate Blanchett (as herself) meets with an envious cousin, also played by Blancett; Bill Murray waits on the Wu Tang Clan, and Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan have a hilarious exchange in
a sequence entitled "Cousins." It's not the best movie we've ever seen, but it's Jim Jarmusch. He's an important filmmaker, so we recommend it.