Rating: 
Summary: Dead Man Ain't Dead
Review: Dead Man is an original Western black comedy that follows the woeful adventures of William Blake, played by Johnny Depp. Blake comes out west for a job opportunity, gets mixed up in a bad situation, and ends up making friends with "Nobody", played by Gary Farmer. Both Depp and Farmer give stellar performances, which is highlighted by the beautiful cinematography shot in black and white film. The DVD is supposed to have a color option which should add a new and interesting way to watch the film. This is a wonderful movie that I watched with disbelief and wonder. I was in disbelief at the horrible things that were happening, and I wondered why they seemed so funny. Makes one feel like a devient. P.S. The music in this film is FANTASTIC.
Rating: 
Summary: Stunning Movie
Review: This is a terrific movie, Johnny Depp pulls off another spectacular performance, Jarmusch really knows how to set the mood of a movie. The music by Neil Young is also great, the music in this film really sets the mood and makes this movie work on another level. There is a large amount of big time stars in this movie, from Gabriel Byrne, Billy Bob Thornton, and an uncredited Steve Buscemi. Filmed in beautiful Black and White this should be a DVD not to be missed by anyone. I just hope Jarmusch puts a commentry track on what should be a great DVD.
Rating:
Summary: Mindblowing
Review: Pay no attention to the reviewer behind the curtain. This movie is brilliant. Anyone who tells you different is an uncultured swine who didn't get their grande latte enema that day.
Rating:
Summary: What Was The Reviewer Smoking?
Review: How unfair is it that Tim Keogh of the Amazon.Com organization gets to lead off the list of reviews for this movie by stating - "This disappointment from Jim Jarmusch stars Johnny Depp in a mystery Western about a 19th-century accountant named William Blake, who spends his last coin getting to a hellish mud town in Texas and ends up penniless and doom struck in the wilderness." I don't know if Tim was busy stuffing his face with popcorn but he makes three erroneous statements in this first line of his totally off-base review. 1) This movie is not a mystery! 2) Johnny Depp spends his last coin buying whiskey. 3) The "hellish mud town" of Machine is on the West Coast - not Texas. (After all, it would take a while to ride by horseback from Texas to British Columbia where the Coastal Indian Tribes were located). You may be asking yourself why I take issue with such mundane details? The answer is obvious - to prove the point that Tim Keogh wasn't even watching this movie, and therefore, has no right to review it. Simply put, Dead Man is a cinematic masterpiece! Jim Jarmusch has made a number of strong movies, but Dead Man surpasses the others as a brilliant work of art. You can see by reading the other reviews that support for Dead Man borders on fanatical. There are few movies that I have watched repeatedly but I continue to see this one over and over again. Everything about the film is different from the conventions of Hollywood mass consumption "fast-film". The story unfolds in a slow and methodical manner and requires much attention on the part of the viewer. If you invest in it, Dead Man will repay you many times over. If you liked Forrest Gump and The Sixth Sense then you can go see another mindless mainstream movie with Tim Keogh and the majority of the ignorant American public. If you need more than that . . . buy Dead Man. I'll bet you watch it more than once!
Rating:
Summary: Stunning art film. An American classic.
Review: Jim Jarmusch is an unbelievable director. His "Dead Man" is a stunning, hypnotic, trance-like western odyssey shot entirely in artistic black & white. Neil Young's soundtrack is nothing short of mesmerizing. The cast is superb, led by Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer. I've seen this film on several occasions, and I liked it best the time that I was sick with a fever ... somehow the mood of the film was only enhanced by my altered state of mind. Dead Man is an American classic. And if you liked Dead Man, don't miss Jarmusch's latest: Ghost Dog, a very cool art film starring Forrest Whittaker as a hip hop/samurai hitman.
Rating: 
Summary: I was amazed...
Review: Jim Jarmusch is an excellent filmmaker, there is little debateabout that. Why then do so many Jarmusch fans consider this film, Dead Man, as his finest work? I sure wish I knew...after reading the glowing reviews here I went out and rented and BOY do I wish I hadn't. Positives: The cast is great, they all command the screen.... Depp, as usual, shows why he is one of the best young ... actors working today. Disappointments: First and foremost: the look of the film. This film is black and white for no apparent reason. ... Throughout the film we will see some really pretty scenery which is only dulled down by the ugly black and white grain. Black and white certainly has its place ...! Secondly,(spoiler) the story itself is very poor ... Throw in an oafish Indian who does nothing but utter nonsense and curse at white men, the "Nobody" character who has the biggest part in the movie. The film also commits a major faux pas in that it opens with a VERY tedious railroad sequence. Good films always start with an interesting spark. No spark here. To make matters worse the sound mixing on the VHS widescreen copy I had was absolutely terrible with the dialogue being recorded very low with the music ... being VERY loud. I had to sit there with remote in hand turning the volume up for dialogue then DOWN for when the music came on. The climax of the movie is a letdown as well. Nothing is resolved. The most interesting characters in the movie such as the Lance Henriksen and Gabriel Byrne characters go NOWHERE and are simply bystanders to this catastrophe on film. If you are new to Jarmusch then I highly recommend you check out another of his easily-found films, Ghost Dog. ...
Rating:
Summary: Some are born to see the light, some are born...
Review: First of all let me support the previous reviewer and repeat his first question: How can any film be a "disappointment" when it is directed by Jim Jarmusch and features an original soundtrack by Neil Young? I am not American, but if I were, I'd be as proud of this movie as an Italian is proud of being Leonardo Da Vinci's or Michaelangelo's compatriot. This is not an exagerration - I think this movie should be considered a part American cultural heritage and should be shown to the next generations as an example of finest piece of American art. There's no need to argue with the guy who wrote the editorial review - may be we should just suggest him to see the movie again.
Rating:
Summary: Unique Movie - It's Great!
Review: I want to give this film one more very positive review. I loved it. I rarely watch movies more than once but this one I paid to see twice at a theater. I have since bought the video and have watched it several more times.
Rating:
Summary: Wunderbar!
Review: Nothing more to say than excellent. The symbolism and metaphors are endless and the film makes the viewer think. Think hard too.
Rating: 
Summary: Irredeemably crass; pathetically pornographic & pretensious
Review: Director Jarmusch has out-done the devil himself in this rank effort at a satirical cinematic deconstruction of the Heroic Quest. How a film can begin with such admirable possibility and then deliberately soil itself...and viewer?...with its incessant pornographic pretensions must...not necessarily!...be seen to be believed. An excellent cast including Johnny Depp, Robert Mitchum, Gabriel Byrne (who appears twice in roles of consummate sleaze bags)and John Hurt is totally squandered before the "vision" of a director who apparently believes the entire Western Mythology of the Hero is dreck. Which in fact is what Jamusch piles-on in scene after scene beginning with a totally gratuitous display of a prostitute performing felatio on a cowboy in the middle of a town, in mid-day on a public venue. The shameless theft of the Kafkaesque theme of the earnest...would-be employee... Depp, being abused and ridiculed by a conscienceless oligarch (played by Mitchum)and venomous bureaucrats (led by "straw man" Hurt)is okay. But the "inadvertent" killing of Mitchum's son leads to a string of increasingly violent, quite "advertent" murders by Depp, his Indian buddy NOBODY (played like a John Candy clone by Jerry Farmer); and a thoroughly perverse group of "lawmen" and bounty hunters...one of whom is an incestuous patricide/matricide and cannibal (of the aforesaid murdered parents!)... By the time Director Jarmusch feels he must regale the viewer with an overt act of cannibalism, any shock effect...ironic, didactic or merely "horrific"...has been lost. This viewer was no longer "overwhelmed" or stunned by the film's theme (articulated by another prostitute just before she is shot by a former lover played by Byrne): THIS IS AMERICA!...but rather the sense of repugnance and boredom that can only be elicited by truly pathetic pornography. The stellar pretensions of the film are also manifestly evidenced by the choice of the "symbolic" name of William Blake for the Depp character. In this movie, Blake's renown as a mystic poet and artist of genius is bartered for a cheap reincarnation in the person of the Depp character who becomes less and less of an innocent "anything" and more like the punks this film dignifies with its lame deconstructionist agenda. "Flesh Gordon" is said to be a mildly amusing "classic" in soft-core pornography using the sci-fi genre to make fun of itself. "Caligula" is said to be the "hard-stuff" which makes the point...if it needs making...that absolute Power absolutely corrupts. DEAD MAN is ultimately point-less. It is an irredeemably crass exercise in pseudo-intellectual onanism whose ultimately humorless, jaded pretensions would be simply silly if what they attacked were not to be genuinely regarded (The mythology of the Hero) as valuable. If one believes my reaction to this film is extreme, consider briefly other viewpoints whose lavish praise of this movie astounds me. See it if you must. But try to avoid the apparent delusion-of-profundity trap a viewer who claims he has seen it ten times has fallen into. WILLIAM BLAKE wrote an extensive poem called "The Marriage of Heaven & Hell" where the souls of the justified and of the damned are described in their respective states enjoying the Beatific vision or suffering the Pain of Loss: THEY BECOME LIKE THAT WHICH THEY BEHOLD...YET AMAZING IN POWER AND STRENGTH; OR HOWLING IN DREAD AND PAIN... Don't kid yourself about which vision this film celebrates and profers as worthy of "heroic" regard. Yes it's only a movie, but consider sparing yourself this very, very bad one...as I wish I had.
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