I actually didn’t make it all the way through this, but as predicted, I did find it fairly tedious. I liked Cate Blanchette’s vignette and the one with Iggy Pop and Tom Waits, but overall I wasn’t all that enterained.

I saw BROKEN FLOWERS and liked it well enough but this Jarmusch effort left me cold. It’s all done as a series of vignettes at diners as the characters consume COFFEE AND CIGARETTES (hence the title). The problem is that nothing too terribly interesting occurs during the short pieces. I got a brief laugh during Steve Buscemi’s characters theory on why Elvis went to Vegas and got fat but I just couldn’t get myself pulled in. The cinematography also tried way too hard to be taken seriously between the use of black and white and the ‘bird’s eye view’ shots of the characters coffee cups and half-wasted smokes. If you’re going to see this one, get it from a friend or the library…do NOT spend money to see it.

I love everything that Jim Jarmusch has done but I can understand that some might find this collection of vignettes a bit tedious. If you appreciate Jim’s wry and dry observations of the bits in between, you’ll like this, otherwise you might be better happier with something else.

Worth watching for the segment featuring Iggy Pop and Tom Waits alone.