Delirious (Tom DiCillo, 2006)

Steve Buscemi and Michael Pitt in Delirious

Cast: Steve Buscemi, Michael Pitt, Alison Lohman, Gina Gershon, Kevin Corrigan, Richard Short, Elvis Costello. Screenplay: Tom DiCillo. Cinematography: Frank G. DeMarco. Production design: Teresa Mastropierro. Film editing: Paul Zucker. Music: Anton Sanko. 

Celebrity is a broad target for satire, but writer-director Tom DiCillo finds the right weapon for hitting it: He makes his protagonist a paparazzo named Les Galantine, played by Steve Buscemi with his usual high-strung, terrier-like intensity and vulnerability. Trying one day to shove aside the other paparazzi and get the right picture of the latest pop music phenomenon, K'Harma (Alison Lohman), Les encounters a homeless kid named Toby (Michael Pitt), hanging around the fringes of the shoot. With his usual impulsive bark-is-worse-than-his-bite manner, Les at first abuses the kid, and then lets him crash in his apartment. Toby is sweet but a little dim: When Les explains that every paparazzo is in search of "the shot heard around the world," the photo that will make his reputation, Toby clearly doesn't know the origin of the phrase. Still, when he proves useful in capturing a shot of a celebrity who has just had surgery on his penis, Les empties a closet for Toby to use as a bedroom and makes him his unpaid assistant. But gradually the dynamic between the two shifts: K'Harma had noticed the good-looking Toby, who wants to be an actor, and so does a casting director (Gina Gershon) when he tags along with Les at a celebrity event. Before long, it's Toby whom the paparazzi are pursuing, much to Les's fury. DiCillo keeps the satire well within the confines of his story, and his actors never let it overwhelm the characterization of Les and Toby and K'Harma.   

The Dead Don't Die (Jim Jarmusch, 2019)

Bill Murray and Adam Driver in The Dead Don't Die

Cast: Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tom Waits, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Tilda Swinton, Eszter Balint, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Larry Fessenden, Maya Delmont, Rosie Perez, Carol Kane, Iggy Pop, Selena Gomez, RZA. Screenplay: Jim Jarmusch. Cinematography: Frederick Elmes. Production design: Alex DiGerlando. Film editing: Affonso Gonçalves. Music: Sqürl.

I suppose that having made a vampire movie, Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Jim Jarmusch may have felt he had to make a zombie movie, but I wish he hadn't. The Dead Don't Die might have become a cult film if there weren't so many good Jarmusch films to choose from: It has all the earmarks of a guilty pleasure movie, like cheeky dialogue and a trendy horror movie trope, the zombie apocalypse. And I have to admit that it's not as bad as most of the zombie fare, and that it's not even Jarmusch's worst film -- I'd have to rank it above The Limits of Control (2009) for that dubious distinction. But there's something dispirited about it, a feeling that having latched onto the idea for the movie, Jarmusch grew bored with it. That reflects itself in the gimmick that gradually creeps into the film: that the cops Cliff (Bill Murray) and Ronnie (Adam Driver) know they're in a movie. It first surfaces when the song "The Dead Don't Die" keeps reappearing on the radio and Ronnie refers to it as "the theme song." Then, in the middle of some byplay between the two of them, Cliff asks, "What, are we improvising here?" And eventually, after Ronnie says, "Oh man, this isn't gonna end well" one time too many, Cliff objects, and Ronnie admits that he's read the script. Cliff is incredulous: "Jim only gave me the scenes I appear in," he fumes. These "meta" moments are amusing, but they counter any involvement a viewer might have in the fates of the characters, predictable as the genre makes them. Still, I liked some things in the film, especially Tilda Swinton's eerie undertaker, who speaks with a Scottish accent and wields a mean samurai sword. I still think Jarmusch is a wonderful writer-director -- Paterson (2016) was clear evidence that he hasn't lost his touch -- when he's got the right subject in mind, but I think he needs to edit himself more, and not just make movies when an idea strikes his fancy.

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, 2017)

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, 2017)

Cast: Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Jeffrey Tambor, Michael Palin, Jason Isaacs, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Rupert Friend. Screenplay: Armando Iannucci, David Schneider, Ian Martin, Peter Fellows, based on a comic book by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin. Cinematography: Zac Nicholson. Production design: Cristina Casali. Film editing: Peter Lambert. Music: Christopher Willis. 

Fargo (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 1996)

Frances McDormand and John Carroll Lynch in Fargo

Marge Gunderson: Frances McDormand
Jerry Lundegaard: William H. Macy
Carl Showalter: Steve Buscemi
Gaear Grimsrud: Peter Stormare
Wade Gustafson: Harve Presnell
Jean Lundegaard: Kristin Rudrüd
Norm Gunderson: John Carroll Lynch
Stan Grossman: Larry Brandenburg
Lou: Bruce Bohne
Mike Yanagita: Steve Park
Shep Proudfoot: Steve Reevis
Scotty Lundegaard: Tony Denman

Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Screenplay: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Cinematography: Roger Deakins
Production design: Rick Heinrichs
Film editing: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Music: Carter Burwell

Every time I watch Fargo, which has been a lot of times, I start out trying to figure how Joel and Ethan Coen bring off the film's unique tone, its shifts from extreme violence to almost benign humor. But then I get caught up in the film itself and forget to make notes. This time around, I found myself struck by Carter Burwell's score, which helps create the mood of the melancholy snow-swept landscape but also occasionally breaks into something like an Elizabethan mode -- think John Dowland or Thomas Tallis, for example -- which, set against the Muzak that pours from speakers in various interior scenes, makes for a strangely wistful effect. The sound ambience of Fargo -- boots crunching on snow, the pinging of open car door alerts, the whine of the wood-chipper that we hear well before we see it -- adds to the film's special capturing of a sense of place. There are a few critics who don't love Fargo, who think that it's snotty and condescending toward the people who live in places like the film's Brainerd and other outskirts of the Twin Cities -- the place where the Coens grew up -- but I think they miss the film's affection for people like the Gundersons, especially in the final scene in which Marge and Norm snuggle in bed and dream of the child they'll have in two months. This scene would be ickily sentimental in other contexts, but it feels just right: The Gundersons are survivors in a landscape that does all it can to drive people mad, a madness that manifests itself in Jerry Lundegaard's financial desperation, his father-in-law's meanness, the killers' disregard for human life, or just the sad fantasy world in which Mike Yanagita seems to exist. It takes a special kind of stoic acceptance tinged with hope to live there, which the Gundersons exhibit perfectly. 

Coffee and Cigarettes (Jim Jarmusch, 2003)

Cast: Roberto Benigni, Steven Wright, Joie Lee, Cinqué Lee, Steve Buscemi, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Joseph Rigano, Vinny Vella, Vinny Vella Jr., Renee French, E.J. Rodriguez, Alex Descas, Isaach De Bankolé, Cate Blanchett, Michael Hogan, Jack White, Meg White, Alfred Molina, Steve Coogan, Katy Hansz, The GZA, RZA, Bill Murray, William Rice, Taylor Mead

Director: Jim Jarmusch
Screenplay: Jim Jarmusch
Cinematography: Tom DiCillo, Frederick Elmes, Ellen Kuras, Robby Müller
Production design: Dan Bishop, Mark Friedberg, Tom Jarmusch

For Jarmusch fans only. Coffee and Cigarettes, a collection of 11 black-and-white short films in which people sit at tables and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes, began as semi-improvisatory shorts spun off from Jarmusch's features by their crew and cast members and friends. Starting with Roberto Benigni and Steven Wright essentially winging it in "Strange to Meet You," the collection evolved from a series of shaggy-dog sketches into more structured narratives with a few motifs echoing throughout. The most structured is certainly "Cousins," in which Cate Blanchett plays two roles: the soigné movie star Cate and her blowsier cousin Shelly, who resents Cate's privileged life. They meet in the coffee shop of a luxury hotel, where Cate patiently endures Shelly's sniping until she's called away for an interview. Shelly has been smoking throughout their conversation, but when she lights up after Cate leaves, a waiter tells her that smoking is forbidden there. The episode "Cousins?" is a parallel story in which Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan, two British actors trying to make it in the States, meet for coffee, during which Molina reveals to a very unimpressed Coogan that he has done genealogical research which proves they are distant relations. After an excited fan asks for his autograph, Coogan becomes more and more condescending toward Molina. Then Molina receives a call on his cell phone from Spike Jonze, instantly deflating Coogan's ego to the point that Molina leaves him to pay the check. Amusing as these vignettes are, they don't rise much beyond the level of anecdotes, and some of the other episodes, such as the ones in which Jack White demonstrates his Tesla coil or Renee French fends off a too-attentive waiter, fall flat. Still, if you don't expect too much, there's an evanescent charm to the whole project.

Watched on Showtime

The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 1998)

Jeff Bridges and Sam Elliott in The Big Lebowski

The Dude: Jeff Bridges
Walter Sobchak: John Goodman
Maude Lebowski: Julianne Moore
Donny Kerabatsos: Steve Buscemi
The Big Lebowski: David Huddleston
Brandt: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Bunny Lebowski: Tara Reid
Jesus Quintana: John Turturro
Knox Harrington: David Thewlis
The Stranger: Sam Elliott

Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Screenplay: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cinematography: Roger Deakins
Production design: Rick Heinrichs
Film editing: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Tricia Cooke
Music: Carter Burwell

The Coen brothers' movies are usually more in the vein of Billy Wilder's acerbic satire than the affectionately loopy take on the varieties of human eccentricity you find in Preston Sturges's films. But The Big Lebowski somehow manages to have touches of both Wilder and Sturges, with the latter, I think, finally predominating. Or maybe it's just that I find that Sam Elliott's appearance, mustache in full bloom, at the end of the film casts the entire movie in a benign light. (Elliott is one of those actors who can make almost any movie better just by showing up in it.) But what also brings Sturges to mind is the special texture he gave to his films with the use of his stock company of character actors like William Demarest, Franklin Pangborn, Jimmy Conlin, and the rest. And the Coens have done something similar by bringing in their usual gang: John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, among others. They also make use of such great actors as Philip Seymour Hoffman and Julianne Moore in supporting roles, and how can you not love a film that gives David Thewlis a bit part in which he does almost nothing but giggle? Still, The Big Lebowski would be nothing without Jeff Bridges, our least appreciated great actor, finding the right note for the stoned and indomitable Dude. He takes a licking -- gets beat up, has his rug pissed on, gets beat up again and has his replacement rug snatched from him, has his car stolen, is threatened by German nihilists, finds his car but its windows get smashed, has a mickey slipped into his White Russian, gets arrested and beaten by the Malibu police, gets thrown out of a cab because he objects to the driver's playing the Eagles, goes home to find his apartment trashed, and finally sees what's left of his car set fire to -- but the Dude abides. And somehow in the middle of all this he finds time to go bowling with Walter and Donny and perform something like Three Stooges routines (only funny) with them. It has been labeled a "cult film," but it transcends that label. Everyone who loves it has their own favorite lines: Mine happen to be "That's the stress talking" and "Hey, careful, man, there's a beverage here!" I suppose I also have to mention the contributions of Roger Deakins's cinematography and Carter Burwell's score augmented by T Bone Burnett's invaluable work as "musical archivist," but then everyone covered themselves with glory by working on The Big Lebowski.

Mystery Train (Jim Jarmusch, 1989)

Cinqué Lee and Screamin' Jay Hawkins in Mystery Train

Jun: Masatoshi Nagase
Mitsuko: Yuki Kodo
Night Clerk: Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Bell Boy: Cinqué Lee
Luisa: Nicoletta Braschi
Dee Dee: Elizabeth Bracco
Johnny: Joe Strummer
Will Robinson: Rick Aviles
Charlie the Barber: Steve Buscemi

Director: Jim Jarmusch
Screenplay: Jim Jarmusch
Cinematography: Robbie Müller
Production design: Dan Bishop
Film editing: Melody London
Music: John Lurie

I was born 40 miles from Tupelo, 75 miles from Memphis, and five years and nine months after Elvis Presley, but I grew up preferring the jazz-pop standards of Gershwin, Kern, Berlin, and Porter, and singers like Jo Stafford and Mel Tormé. It took me a number of years before I finally caught up with what was supposedly my generation, but eventually I succumbed to the myth of the King -- just in time to witness its deconstruction. That's partly what's going on in Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train, a film that dragged me back to my own roots the moment I saw the City of New Orleans racing through a kudzu-shrouded railway cut. The myth is still so potent that it can draw young Japanese tourists from Yokohama to Memphis to visit Sun Records and Graceland, but also so porous that Jarmusch can peer through it -- like the ghost of Elvis that visits Luisa -- and glimpse some of the racial injustice that elevated Elvis to superstardom and left black musicians like Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Rufus Thomas (both of whom have roles in the film) struggling for recognition. If the film's three interlocking stories feel too much like a familiar contrivance, it's worth remembering that Mystery Train was made five years before Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) and probably influenced it. The first segment, with the young tourists Jun and Mitsuko providing a decidedly original point of view on a country they view through the lens of rock 'n' roll, is the best. The middle one, in which the newly widowed Luisa drifts toward the same hotel where Jun and Mitsuko are staying and winds up sharing a room with the frenetic Dee Dee, is the weakest, particularly Luisa's ghost-sighting. The third section, with the wonderfully eccentric trio of Joe Strummer, Rick Aviles, and Steve Buscemi, ties everything together, but fortunately it doesn't do it so neatly that it feels phony. And the intermediary scenes with Hawkins as desk clerk and Cinqué Lee as bellhop keep everything in the skewed perspective that the film needs. Robby Müller's cinematography treats the characters in the film's three episodes as only transients through the city: He and Jarmusch often frame a scene, like the downtown buildings rising in the distance beyond vacant lots, and have the characters walk through the frame. The boarded-up storefronts and empty streets have an ironic permanence to them that the characters lack, so that the central character in Mystery Train is Memphis itself, seen here as bleak and grimy but still charged with some of the vital spark that gave rise to so much music. Jarmusch wrote the screenplay before he ever visited Memphis, but he found exactly what he anticipated there.