In Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die, the zombie apocalypse rustles yawningly but determinedly to fruition in Centerville, an anonymous American hamlet, population 738. The omens, initially disparate and disconnected, begin to cohere into an existential collapse: Wild animals flee, and pets attack their owners. The sun is still out at 9 at night, and the next evening it’s … [Read more...]
‘Paterson’: A bus-driving Virgil guides us through the quotidian
Most of Jim Jarmusch’s best movies are journey films, charting a character’s movements between two points — geographic but also spiritual and temporal. The more protracted the route, the stranger and better the movie. So it is with Paterson, which follows, with Bressonian simplicity and Akermanesque repetition, a week in the life of a Paterson, N.J., bus driver also named … [Read more...]