Don't Mess with Bill; Jim Jarmusch's Latest Is the Perfect Vehicle for Another Sad-Sack Murray Character.

Summary

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In [Jim Jarmusch]'s last film Coffee and Cigarettes, several characters espoused Nikola Tesla's theory that "the earth is a conductor of acoustical resonance"--a lovely phrase that pretty much nails this distinctive filmmaker's singular m.o.

It's in many ways the movie version of that famous Dylan lyric: "Some are mathematicians/Some are carpenter's wives/Don't know how it all got started/I don't know what they're doing with their lives."

I doubt there's any other actor who could turn a simple bit of business like eating diced carrots into the summer's most exciting and cathartic action sequence, but [Bill Murray] is so focused here, so perfectly in tune with Jarmusch's deadpan less-is-more aesthetic, his tiniest gestures tell us everything we ever needed to know about Don Johnston.

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Don't Mess with Bill; Jim Jarmusch's Latest Is the Perfect Vehicle for Another Sad-Sack Murray Character.

Ever since his 1984 breakthrough Stranger Than Paradise, writer/director Jim Jarmusch has been conducting awkward silences like they were symphonies.

Jarmusch films thrive in those long gaps between words, which are alwa...

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