Screened the latest from Jim Jarmusch and it was a bit of a mixed bag. It put me in mind of Jean Pierre Melville's gangster films with Alain Delon, gorgeously minimalist cinematography and penetrating close ups of beautiful, impassive faces. It didn't quite work, I think because the characters were just too passive (Alain Delon may have looked like an indolent marble sculpture, but he wasn't adverse to shooting fools who got in his way). The movie created a tremendous mood (with the help of a genuinely spectacular soundtrack) and then frittered it away.
It was a bit like Ghost Dog in that sense- it was caught in the no-mans land between genre and art house. I liked it well enough, but it won't be joining Dead Man, Down by Law & Broken Flowers in the hardcopy archives.
Sweetie, on the other hand, is every inch the fabulous examination of subterranean family dysfunction I remembered. And the Criterion version is a visual stunner, especially when your memories blossomed from a ratty old VHS copy. It has a bunch of fantastic extras too- three of director Jane Campion's student films, an interview with the two stars conducted a decade after filming, and a commentary track with the director, co-writer and cinematographer. Highly recommended.
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Did you know that The Piano is out of print on DVD?
WTF!
God bless Netflix....
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