There's a great discussion of the films of Jim Jarmusch in Slate , signalling the release of several of his film by Criterion on DVD:
For better or worse, Jim Jarmusch has developed a reputation as the cineaste of cool. He has only himself to blame. For one, he has a rare genius for the suave posture and the shockingly odd image. Think of Johnny Depp in a checkered suit and black bowler, limping through a birch forest in the surrealist Western Dead Man (1995), or the two Japanese tourists in Mystery Train (1989), ecstatic with passion for Elvis Presley, sitting on the floor of their Memphis, Tenn., hotel room with lipstick-smeared faces. He also frequently casts musicians as his actors (John Lurie, Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, and Jack and Meg White, among others), and his soundtracks, featuring Charlie Parker, Elvis, and Ethiopian composer Mulatu Astatke, help give his films their distinctive mood—the cinematic equivalent of a world-weary shrug. Most responsible of all for this reputation, however, is his trademark dialogue, with its reliance on antiquated slang, digressive riffs, and bathetic one-liners.Jarmusch's hipness offers its own distinct pleasures—how could an encounter between Bill Murray and the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA and GZA (in 2003's Coffee and Cigarettes) fail to amuse? But there's also something distracting about this aspect of his work—it tends to obscure the qualities that distinguish him as one of the great American filmmakers of his generation. What's unique about Jarmusch isn't his flair for antic conversation, it's his stunningly expressive visual compositions. In his best films, he creates his characters through painstaking attention to gesture, subtle changes of facial expression, and other forms of nonverbal communication. It's usually not until the characters stop running their mouths that Jarmusch makes himself heard.
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