Very Cool!!!
... View MoreFantastic!
... View Morewhat a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
... View MoreThere is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes
... View MoreA companion piece to Smoke rather than a sequel, and as such it works well enough, but the fact that it's made mostly of outtakes and improvisations is easily detectable, and it feels far too disjointed, while still trying rather feebly for a coherent storyline, especially in the epilogue. However, the acting is good enough that many scenes shine through, some of the cameos feel forced but most of them are spot-on (brilliant appearances from Madonna, Roseanne and Jim Jarmusch especially) and it's enjoyable for fans of the original Smoke as well as Jarmusch fans, although all too often it feels like a Jarmusch carbon copy that doesn't have Jim's unique spark and vision.
... View MoreI have founded this semidocumentary about the Brooklynian way of life from an ordinary man's POV rather amusing and compellingand very sarcastic and mordant; it's studded with vaguely familiar faces (whose identities are mostly unknown to me, as I am not a frequenter of the culture in causethe Jarmusch/ Madonna brands ). The movie is, as I suggested, ironicyet _unconclusively so. It is unassuming, sometimes funny, and Mel Gorham is very sexy. On the other hand, it's not too intense or particularly successful at seizing the hidden life of Brooklyn. It has the intelligent, not really intellectual or particularly inspired look of other similar attemptslike some Mamet outings . It's not insightful or meaningfulbut funny, light, enjoyable. It is also cruel and merciless in exposing empty livespeople to whom the Dodgers' leaving was the most important thing in their lives, etc., insipid, lifeless existences, withered humanity, banal destines soaked in ugliness. This world is wholly alien to me. This Auster intellectuality, like some Mamet mean intellectuality, seems not very far from the W. Allen intellectuality.I guess the film is for the most part ironic; yet if it was meant to convey a certain savor of Brooklyn life, it did not succeedat least with those ignorant of Brooklyn things. The Dodgers and the Belgian waffles are part of that Americana (what Amis once stated as 'too much trolley-car nostalgia and baseball-mitt Americana, too much ancestor worship, too much piety ') that is particularly unattractive to me. In this sociological sense ,the movie describes an utterly uninteresting world and humanity. These things do not seem to me childishbut, on the contrary, senile and boring. These ingredients are particularly repulsive to me. What strikes is the artificiality and shallowness and inner poverty of these clichés. Some 60 years ago, some Europeans, many French Europeans hinted this might denote a styleand even be a stylish thing. Maybe they meant different realities, or maybe things changed too much.
... View MoreAnd then to wonder that this movie was never meant to be made!!Thank god for Wayne Wang that after shooting Smoke(which does not even come close to this little gem)he had some more footage to show to us.The leading performance by Harvey Keitel is outstanding,this man can really act! I already was convinced though after seeing Mean Streets,Taxi Driver,Reservoir Dogs,Pulp Fiction,Bad Lieutenant etc. The other performances aren't bad either.And then the (guest)actors.Names like Madonna,Roseanne,Michael J. Fox,Mira Sorvino and Lou Reed have small parts in this movie.Especially Madonna and Michael J. Fox are very funny.Another great part of the movie are the statistics of Brooklyn(Belgian Waffles?!).Although this movie is always seen as an add-on for Smoke I think that Blue in the Face is far superior to it's older brother and that movie should be more in the spotlights. 10/10
... View MoreThis is a great little set piece to celebrate the diversity and chaos that is, among many other things, my home. Brooklyn is the main character of this story and despite the film's limited scope (set mostly around a tobacco store near Windsor Terrace), it manages to really get at that feeling that makes Brooklyn the only place I wanna live. All the people here, whether they're bored by Brooklyn or fascinated by it, are connected by the genuinely weird way we manage to live together, despite our very prominent differences.
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