Rating: 
Summary: Sitting in Hell and Watching "Stranger than Paradise"
Review: I saw this movie about 15 years ago, in Iran, with a bad quality and under a treble cultural condition. Books and publications were censored and watching videotapes were banned by law. We had to hide them under our shirts when we wanted to take them out. All these, could lead you to a kind of mentality that finds the source of all your sufferings in the society and culture you are living in.I remember watching the movie shocked me because of its simplicity, its concise and beautiful dialogue and its unique visual language. There are a lot ot silences in the movie when people sit there, do something very simple (like drinking beers or watching Tom & Jerry on TV) but the only thing that comes out of the picture is their solitude. The fade-outs and fade-ins of the movie makes watching it like collecting some forgotten memories. The movie was so tangible for me. Two guys walk on the snowy "wasteland" kind of cityscape of Cleveland saying "you go somewhere new, and you think something is different, but everything is the same." To American viewer the movie may look like a movie about America. To me, however, it was -and it is- a movie about human solitude, about the impossibility of communication among people. Virginia Wolf once said "human experiences can not be transferred to the others, this is the secret of human loneliness" (sorry, ... I translated it from the Persian text I have read. I'm sure the original English is more beautiful!) "Stranger than Paradise" is about this impossibility. Watching the movie in Iran, reminded me of how the human solitude is coming from somewhere beyond stupidity of political systems. Watching it in America, a country which its cultural freedom produces Jerry Springer's show as its most popular show on TV, you reach to the same conclusion. (The experience of stupidity for me is very simmilar when I see Jerry or an Iranian soap opera.) I see this movie as a "Waiting for Godot" in cinema. And I think it is not discovered yet.
Rating:
Summary: Not for everyone
Review: I saw this movie in 1984 in a great old theatre in Sacramento, California...three times. This is without a doubt my favorite movie of all time. I've read all the reviews and believe me, I get it. This movie arouses either passion or boredom, there is no in between. I love it though.
I laugh hard everytime Eddie explains 'choking the alligator'. The extended scenes without dialogue are wonderful. I fell in love with Eva for awhile I'm sure.
If you're brave, take a chance and you might find a new favorite movie.
Rating:
Summary: The movie that changed my ideas about movies
Review: I stumbled across the movie back in the 80's while I was attending a small college in Dubuque, IA. The acting was not spectacular and some of the camera work appeared amateurish, but I was hooked. It was the mixture of great storytelling, quirky characters, and Screamin' Jay Hawkin's "I Put a Spell on You" that made me love this movie so much. This is still Jim Jarmusch's best film.
Rating:
Summary: stranger than paradise is a great movie
Review: I think that Stranger Than Paradise is the most original, sensitive, intelligently humorous and satisfying movie I have ever seen. Someday, if not already, it will rank with the greatest movies of all time. To me, stranger than paradise is a masterpiece of film making. It is one movie I own and I do not own many, not many at all.
Rating:
Summary: I saw this in Paris in the 80's, and it just clicked
Review: I was a lonely GI living in Germany in the early 80's and was in Paris for the weekend. A Parisian couple (Great folks, I've NEVER found Parisians to be anything but nice and warm people!) invited me to the film. We saw it near the George Pomp. (I can't spell...) center and it was marvelous. Enough has been analyzed about the film, but to me it struck a personal nerve/note on items of alienation, lonliness, and finally, warmth and acceptance. Screamin' Jay Hawkins "I put a spell on you" fits so well...it was genius to place it (and the boombox, in black and white on a lonely street corner...) in the film. I even bought his albums (that I could find).
Anyway, it's a slow movie, definitely art house, but if you're in a very expat (American) mood, or halfway intelligent, you'll get it. I think it would be interesting if the director did a more updated film on Imigrants. I have a friend who's parents are from Syria, who was brought up in the U.S. He is your typical (OK, well, we're like that) American, and when cousins visit from the Middle East they're in culture shock. I think if Jim J. did something with a Middle Eastern bent it would be interesting.
Mark
Rating:
Summary: Hello? Is any body out there?
Review: I'm laughing at some of these reviews. Nothing happens? There really is no message? Boring? No character depth?
People, it's not hard to get an education in this country. Maybe some you should look into enrolling somewhere. There are immensly tantilzing themes in this movie which are dramatized so beautifully it's almost painful. Not one person touched on the startling power of a young man who falls in love with his own cousin. Talk about immposible love. Or the slow, almost invisible build of their friendship told exclusively through subtext revealed through a bare minimum of words. No theme? The scene of three young people looking out into the white fog over a winter lake not obvious enough? This image perfectly captures the frustration of looking for an illusive, promised paradise in the land of milk and honey.
These aren't three boring people with boring lives. This is us. Get it?
Rating:
Summary: Howlingly Funny If You "Get" Deadpan Humor
Review: I've seen this film many times in both theaters and at home. I own it, of course. One of the advantages of seeing it in the theater is that some people need an audience to realize how truly funny it is. There are 4 essential characters. John Lurie, the musician, plays the closest we get to a lead character. He lives in dismal circumstances in New York City. He has an incredibly doltish friend, Frank, who is his best friend. They take Lurie's 16 year old cousin from Hungary to Cleveland so she can stay with an old woman relative. The ride to Cleveland is hilarious even but their stay there is even more so. These characters embody what is known as the "full Cleveland," that is, being incredibly dorky by anyone's standards. And where else could they stay but on the near West Side, the epitome of that image? The film's writer-director knows that of which he speaks since is a native of the Cleveland-Akron metro region. One thing about Clevelanders though is that they can laugh at themselves. I saw this film at the opening of the Cleveland International Film Festival, my home town, and the entire audience, including hubby and me, were howling throughout. The film then moves on to Florida with the three younger people(another insider joke as this is Cleveland's favorite home away from home). In Florida, the three manage to get into even more absurd episodes, including scoring money off a drug dealer. Truly, these 3 are the Three Stooges of Deadpan. Jarmusch makes good use of music in all of his films and this, his first, has a wonderful soundtrack which acts as counterpoint to the deadpan.
Rating:
Summary: exciting film about boring people
Review: If you have ever felt a complete stranger in a foreign country or just felt lonely (and sure you did), you'll love the film. Stranger Than Paradise is one of my Jarmusch favorites (at par with Down by Law).
Two melancholic characters, played or better said - lived - by John Lurie and Richard Edson, seem to be happy to just go with the flow without any particular purpose. But arrival of the Hungarian cousin creates purpose in their lives and makes the film very exciting. There are plenty of hilarious moments in this, in my view, very sad movie about being an outsider and feeling lonely.
5 out of 5 stars for Jim Jarmusch, John Lurie and cameraman Tom DiCillo.
Rating: 
Summary: What's brown and sounds like a bell?
Review: It's an old Python joke but it best sums up my feeling towards all the glowing reviews of what appears to be a technically competent but boring movie. Seriously, though. I did write a very fair and objective review of this film a few months back but it never got posted. So instead of retrying to capture the essence of that first review, I'll just give you my side. Obviously, I hated it. I watched it several times to try to see what in heck its admirers saw in it and I'm still at a loss. And I happen to love independent cinema. I also attended class at NYU with the actress and would loved to have showed others but I can not see anyone beyond the already converted who would be able to stay with the movie more than 5 minutes. I honestly feel there is an Emporer's New Clothes mentality at work where a good portion of the people are afraid to admit that the "don't get it". As a film geek with an extensive video collection of independent films, I can say with confidence and reassurance to those supposedly clueless people that THERE IS NOTHING TO GET. Nothing acting (and Ms. Balint can act a helluva lot better than what is shown here), nothing dialogue, nothing plot. gimmicky blackouts and master shots do not add up to something. At least not in this fellow's eyes.
And now for the PC tag: Film, as with anything in the arts, is subjective. There is no good or bad. If you like it, great. Then to you it's good. So I do not discourage anyone from seeing this film. I'll just give my opinion and one star rating (and believe me, if I had the option, I would have been pressed to give this over rated movie a 1/2 star).
Oh, and to non-Python fans, the answer to the joke is DUNG.
Rating: 
Summary: American Indie Classic!
Review: Jim Jarmusch described his film as a combination of the Honeymooners and a film by Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. I would say it is more like the love child of Wim Wenders' "Kings of the Road" and a Woody Allen film... probably "Manhattan". So if any of those aforementioned artists/works of art appeal to you, you will probably like this movie. It has no budget, but makes up for it with lovely black and white photography and charmingly realistic characters. Willie's Hungarian cousin Eva comes to visit him in New York, and along with Willie's nerdy friend, they travel aimlessly from NY to Cleveland to Florida. This one lingers in the memory.
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