Rating: 
Summary: yeech!!
Review: even though tim keough makes a couple of errors on his review, he pretty much hit it on the mark as far as the overall film experience goes. this movie is a mess. it's confusing, and bizarre, and just plain dumb. i enjoy that johnny depp likes to take chances and do "out there" cinema, but he really needs to be careful in choosing his projects. it's films like this and "fear and loathing in las vegas" that could effectively ruin a career.
Rating:
Summary: The 3 Stooges did a better job in "Whoops, I'm an Indian"
Review: A sort of "Seinfeld Goes West," this movie about nothing has no characterization, no plot, little intelligible dialogue, and somebody imitating Chris Farley playing an American Indian - not since the days of Andrew Jackson has the American Indian been so straightforwardly assaulted. A partial remake of the 1952 Spaghetti classic western "Zip-e-Di-Do" (with Jeff Chandler as the Indian and Red Buttons as the accidental gunfighter (and with special appearance by Audie Murphy in the Gabriel Byrne role), this film is basically a twilight zone attempt gone awry. Devoid of all humor, and even all color, the recurring joke of the movie deals with the fact that Blake never has tobacco, no matter how many times the Indian, the transvestites, the cannibals or anyone else might ask him. Pretty funny stuff, huh?
After defending himself in a fight, he goes on the lam and in practical slow motion rides around the forest doing nothing, while encountering other people who also do nothing. Then he dies. During his meanderings, he thinks of nothing, and really learns nothing either. No themes of life or death are explored. It's so deliberately empty of anything resembling rationality that some poor souls have fallen for it. Read the other reviews and see how many people who love the film cannot really describe it. Not really a masterpiece, no matter how many times you watch it. For a macabre wester tour de force,check out instead Rockin Thru the Rockies, with Moe Larry and Curly. Now THERE is a movie that makes some sense....
Rating: 
Summary: Surrealist cinema is a live and well, thankfully.
Review: Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1995) Dead Man may be the most underrated film of the last two decades, a brilliant, surrealist look at the Old West through the eyes of a number of characters just as brilliant and surrealist as their landscape. William Blake (Johnny Depp) is an accountant from Cleveland, and perhaps a reincarnation of the poet of the same name. He is offered a job in the pre-Civil War west, and goes out to take it. When he gets to the firm who offered him the job, the supervisor (John Hurt) tells him the job was given to someone else, since he was late. He insists on seeing the firm's owner (Robert Mitchum), who cashes him out of the office with a shotgun. That night, in the hotel where Blake is staying, two people are murdered. They happen to the be firm's owner's daughter and her fiancée. Blake is an easy target, and his pursuit and reaction to it forms the basis of the film. Strong, wonderful performances about in this movie. The best of all is that of Gary Farmer, as Nobody, an Indian whose job, is says, is to prepare the soul of William Blake to go back to the land of the spirits. Nobody becomes Blake's sidekick and sometime mentor, helping him to understand how to get along in the West. Among those assassins sent out after Blake: a trio of crossdressing homosexuals (Iggy Pop, Billy Bob Thornton, and Jared Harris); an amoral cannibal and his two wannabe sidekicks (Lance Henriksen, Michael Wincott, and Eugene Byrd), and, hearing it through the grapevine, a pair of U. S. Marshals (Jimmie Ray Weeks, Mark Bringleson). As should be obvious from the list above, this movie is packed with starpower. (And I didn't mention Gabriel Byrne, Crispin Glover, Alfred Molina, Gibby Haynes, Steve Buscemi, and a handful of others with smaller roles.) It balances, but never outweighs, Jarmusch's attention to detail in this minor black and white gem. Blake's journey is a thing to behold. Beautiful, violent, and ultimately nonsensical, just like the life it mirrors. ****
Rating: 
Summary: Slighly overwrought revisionist.
Review: Jim Jarmusch's fans seem to imediately whip out their proverbial bottles of searing vitriol whenever anyone dares to proclaim anything less than supplicated adoration for his work, which is unfortunate. This is not a perfect film. It's themes are muddled; the William Blake references are slightly 'hokey' and would seem extraneous for anyone who has read the poetry in question. Although Depp's character is a sufficiently subverted quirk on the familiar 'man without a name' paradigm, Famer's 'metaphysical Native American' performance at times threatens to degenerate into unintentional parody. Jarmusch, with this film, has tried too hard to iconoclastically subvert the familiar tenets of the Western. It was a noble attempt, which succeeds in fits and starts (especially the relationship between Depp's quirky chracter and his complement, 'Nobody') but must be deemed a (relative) failure. Still, there is much to be admired; Neil Young's guitar and Robby Muller's gorgeous photography. Also, Jarmusch's languidly moody direction is a definite plus.
Rating: 
Summary: I hate Johnny. Why do I love all his movies? :)
Review: Ok so Jumpstreet turned me off Johnny for life, but he sure can pick the movies. He has picked a bunch of offbeat movies that always give up the goods. For some reason, I kept waiting for the western revenge story to crop up, or the next event in the history of western movie making to take hold of the plot. Never happened. I watched this movie almost in the same way as the story happened to the main character. It just kept coming and I just kept watching. It is strange and has a great cast. Brilliantly filmed and just plain cool to look at. My favorite Johnny Depp movie. Maybe I really do like him. That 21 jumpstreet really makes it hard to tell.
Rating: 
Summary: DEAD MAN BARELY LIVES.
Review: I THINK JOHNNY DEPP IS A GREAT ACTOR AND I RESPECT HIS ANTI-HOLLYWOOD PHILOSOPHY, BUT THIS MOVIE JUST BARELY TICKS. IT IS A CONTEMPORARY BLACK AND WHITE, ROCK AND ROLL ALMOST WESTERN.
THE LUDICROUS STORY FOLLOWS THE EXPLOITS OF A BEWILDRED ACCOUNTANT WILLIAM BLAKE (DEPP) WHO ACCIDENTALLY BECOMES A NOTORIOUS GUNFIGHTER. HE ENCOUNTERS VARIOUS WEIRDOS ON HIS ILIAD TYPE JOURNEY THROUGH THE WEST. HE IS SEMI RESCUED BY A NUEROTIC INDIAN WHO IS HUMUROUS AT FIRST AND THEN JUST SILLY. ROBERT MITCHUM IS ONE BRIGHT SPOT IN THIS UNSTRUNG FILM. ANOTHER IS BILLY BOB THORNTON WHO PLAYS A 'BEEN ALONE TOO LONG IN THE WILDERNESS' PSYCHOTIC HILLBILLY. DEPP ALSO DOES HIS PART BUT THERE IS ONLY SO MUCH YOU CAN DO IN A SEEMINGLY DRUG INDUCED HAZE OF A FILM. TAKE A PASS ON THIS ONE IF YOU LIKE YOUR MOVIES TO MAKE SENSE. THIS DOG JUST DONT HUNT.
Rating:
Summary: Modern-Day Masterpiece
Review: ... Jarmusch's best film since the brilliant Stranger Than Paradise and perhaps his best film altogether. Only one critic really got it right and that's the usually reliable Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader whose Dead Man review titled "Acid Western" is a must-read. Rosenbaum also wrote a BFI book on Dead Man which is highly recommended. Dead Man is the first movie I ever went to the theater on three consecutive days to watch. The movie pulls me into its world like few others - 2001, Taxi Driver and Stranger Than Paradise come to mind. Muller's b&w photography is stunning and Neil Young's soundtrack is one of the best ever recorded (Ebert, who hated the film, says it sounds like "a man repeatedly dropping his guitar" but then Ebert, as fine as man as he is, also thinks Tomb Raider, XXX and Daredevil are good movies.) Some people will find Dead Man unbearably slow. Others will find it hypnotic. Those in the latter group will find the movie to be a unique, special experience, the kind only an auteur like Jarmusch can provide. Nobody is one of the most unforgettable characters in modern cinema. This is one of those movies, like Stranger Than Paradise, which makes me want to thank the director. So, to Mr. Jarmusch, thank you so very much. You've made my life richer with this movie.
Rating:
Summary: This Movie Needs To Be Viewed More Than Once!
Review: Neil Young's guitar. A movie shot in black and white. Cameo's by Billy Bob Thorton and Iggy Pop. Robert Mitchum as the grizzled owner of the Metal Works in Machine, Texas. I sat and watched. Neither my wife or myself said a word. It was spellbinding. A western and more. Johnny Depp is in fine form. Give this movie a chance, you won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Buy this, unless you are a Dead Man.
Review: There are reasons for living. You have many. If you add this film to your list of reasons, then, I believe, if only for the purpose of re-watching, your life will be longer.
Rating:
Summary: A modern classic from a brilliant director.
Review: Johnny Depp turns in an artfully understated performance as the hapless William Blake who, though unfamiliar with his namesake, nonetheless learns to speak poetry with a six-gun. Tobacco-less and slowly dying of a gunshot wound, he travels through wilderness shot on-location in Arizona and Oregon, on the lam from three ruthless bounty-hunters, US Marshalls, and every possum-skinner hungry and quick enough to collect the reward on his head. The only thing keeping him alive long enough to die peacefully is help from Nobody, an Indian outcast who believes Blake is the reincarnation of the great artist/poet/visionary who shares his name. As Nobody quotes the latter in the film, "The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn from the crow." In other words, see it for yourself...
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