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2. Are you drawn toward any particular character for their perspective or personality? Do any of them put you off? Why?
   
   
3. Do these conversations remind you of your own conversations with friends? Would you feel comfortable being invited to join any of these conversations? How often do you find yourselves in conversation with a total stranger? How often do you pursue a conversation with someone who has strong opinions that are different than yours?
   
   

Coffee and Cigarettes is appropriately rated R for foul language. Discerning grownups will find much to enjoy here and little to offend them, but it's not for children.

Photo © Copyright United Artists

Independent filmmaker extraordinaire Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man, Down by Law, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai) has just released a film that compiles his collection of short sketches in which famous figures meet to sip coffee, smoke cigarettes, and shoot the breeze. Coffee and Cigarettes was filmed in black and white, but the cast is quite colorful; it includes Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, Cate Blanchett, Roberto Begnini, the White Stripes, Bill Murray, and a surprising variety of others.

I found it to be a hit-and-miss collection, but Jarmusch's unconventional approach always makes for an interesting time at the movies, and many of these sketches are hilarious and memorably surreal. My full review of the film is at Christianity Today Movies.

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) says, "The oddball assortment of sketches … ranges from the mildly amusing to the utterly inane. Though Jarmusch's patchwork approach is interesting, the net result is neither as developed nor as entertaining as his similar slice-of-life Night on Earth. And while he once again uses commonplace activities … to explore societal peccadilloes, the smokescreen of social commentary lifts rather quickly, revealing the film for what it is: a motley mosaic of over-caffeinated conversations involving people sitting around talking nicotine-stained nonsense."

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