Unlimitedia Sick Product of a Sick System

GrimPrecise I'll tell you why so serious

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Davalon-Davalon I read the raves on this, including the 4-star one from Roger Ebert, who I always trust (even though he's no longer with us), so I thought, "Okay, it's going to be great." I and my husband stared in slack-jawed amazement at a poorly-shot, horribly edited, plot-less, pointless exercise in... what? I was willing to give it every break, even up to the final scene... and then I thought, WTF? A woman comes from Hungary to apparently visit her aunt, but because the aunt is going to the hospital, she's forced to stay with her Neanderthal cousin who has as much intelligence as a mentally challenged toddler. The cousin's friend, with his Eddie Cantor eye movements and constant rubbernecking, had slightly less intelligence. At first I felt sorry for the woman, because she seemed trapped by the whims and the stupid decisions of her cousin and his idiot friend. But then she does something near the end of the film that, while it's understandable, erased all the goodwill I had built up towards her. Also, I cannot understand how any of the three "adults" in this "story" could think it would be acceptable to leave an elderly aunt living alone in a god-awful snowy city with apparently no friends and very little English-speaking ability. I thought it was heartless. I felt the woman, as an actress and as a real person, would have never ever accepted the insults and stupidity she was presented with, but she willed herself to do it for whatever minor paycheck she received. For a while I was getting into the "Twilight Zone" spartan environment of it all. The empty streets and landscapes. The desolation, the isolation, the overwhelming deadliness of these people's lives. But since the two men in particular seemed just mind-bogglingly stupid, it was hard to care for one second what happened to them. In fact, the only person who actually seemed to have any definable feelings was "Billy" the young man who apparently had a crush on the Hungarian cousin. I do not know why this has received the raves it has received. If you want to stare for 90 minutes at shoddy black and white footage, of scenes that are cut unnaturally, of dialog that is painfully and obviously improvised in hopes of finding a common thread that makes sense, if you want to invest your emotional energy into people that really don't deserve it (although the female character does... she just doesn't end up being smart enough to get out while she can), then, please, go ahead and have the time of your life. When it ended so abruptly and unbelievably , it just left me with a sick pit in my stomach. If this is what people call "art," then I still have a chance to pursue my creative dreams, which, yes, I believe are far superior to this leaden fake film.

gavin6942 Willie is a pre-slacker-era slacker living in New York City. His cousin Eva from Hungary visits him for several days, and then goes to Cleveland to stay with their Aunt Lotte. One year later, Willie and his friend Eddie take a road trip to Cleveland to visit Eva and Aunt Lotte.While this is not my favorite Jim Jarmusch film (and I do think he is an exceptionally skilled director), I have to recognize for what it is -- the birth of modern independent film. The success Jarmusch achieved here indirectly lead to Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith and countless others.Some scenes, particularly those at the beach, even evoke Ingmar Bergman, something I find hard to believe was intentional. But the lifeless scenes among what should be a happy moment call out Bergman's name, and perhaps Swedish film in general.Screamin' Jay Hawkins has a song featured quite prominently here, and I see it as a precursor to Jarmusch's association with Tom Waits. Although Hawkins and Waits may have never met (I have no idea), I do think a fondness or one inevitably leads to the other.

wandereramor I first encountered Stranger than Paradise in a Intro to Film tutorial - - I think it was for the week on cinematography. It was only the opening scene, but the visual style grabbed me right away. The grainy black and white, looking not like a 1980s feature film but rather newsreel of some mid-century atrocity, the long opening shot of Eszter Balint's Eva walking away from the airport like an angel of death, the almost-surreal scene of her walking through the streets blaring "I Put A Spell On You"... it stuck with me. A few years later, I finally got around to watching the film in its entirety. The visual style fades after a while and becomes invisible in the way cinematography tends to. But what emerges in its place is a slow but devastating character drama.Stranger than Paradise is really about the immigrant experience in America. In this way it is a strange, low-key response to The Godfather. Whereas Coppola saw the story of the immigrant as one of struggle, seduction, and eventual corruption -- a Hollywood tragedy, in other words -- Jarmusch argues that it is a grind, an endless procession of ungrateful relatives, incomprehensible television, dead-end jobs, and the slow realization that no matter where you go, the banality of real life is always there ahead of you.Jarmusch was a pioneer in independent American cinema. The style of Stranger than Paradise is echoed in any of the countless "mumblecore" films that deal with the mundanity of contemporary existence (and perhaps existence in general). It is frequently a boring film, mainly because it is about boredom and its omnipresence. Certainly it could be aesthetically improved, so that the dialogue and the characters have the same artistic grace as the cinematography. But somehow I like Stranger than Paradise just as it is. Instead of the catharsis of Hollywood, it leaves the viewer with an emptiness, a strange hole in their gut that they can't quite figure out what to do with. But maybe that hole was always there, and the film only cast a revelatory light on it.

Jackson Booth-Millard From writer/director Jim Jarmusch (Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Broken Flowers), I had no clue what this film featuring the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book was about, and to be honest, that didn't change much when I watched it. Basically Willie (John Lurie) is a self confessed hipster and slacker living in New York City, and his Hungarian cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) has arrived unexpectedly for a surprise visit lasting for ten days, while Aunt Lotte (Cecillia Stark) is in hospital. For a while he makes it clear he is not happy with her being around, but over time he enjoys her company, one instance where he really likes her is after she steals groceries and makes a TV dinner for him. The ten days pass and Eva is ready to leave, but is obvious Willie is upset after she has gone, Eddie (Richard Edson) made sure to help her out before she left, but Willie really wants her back. It is after winning a large amount of money cheating in a game of poker that the two friends start a journey to Cleveland, but even when they do find her, and spend some time with her friend Billy (Danny Rosen) they find they are just as bored as when they were in New York. Willie and Eddie decide rather than go back home to travel to Florida, and obviously they take Eva with them, but after settling a bit they lose all the money they have betting on dog races, and they try to win it back in horse races. After a trip to the beach Eva is mistaken for a drug dealer and gets a large amount of money, which she leaves some of for Willie, along with a note that she is going to the airport, and she sees the only European place to go is Budapest, her original home country. She decides to wait until the next day, and Willie and Eddie return having won all the money back on the horse races, but they find Eva has gone, and after seeing the note Willie rushes to get on the plane she should be travelling. The final shot though sees Willie getting on the plane to Budapest and it taking off, Eddie watches it take off and leave, but Eva has in fact gone back to the hotel they were staying, to an empty room. I can't really say anything much about the stars as I know none of them, only that they do a good job to not express many expressions and emotions at all, the same can be said for director Jarmusch, who creates a rather quiet film with not much going on, it is honestly a little dull, but that actually adds to the odd atmosphere and overall unpredictable feel of this strangely fascinating road movie drama. Good!