SYNOPSIS
Jim Jarmusch has consistently wowed audiences with his truly distinctive cinematic vision.
Shot over the course of a 17-year-period, COFFEE AND CIGARETTES proves once again that Jarmusch is a true original. This time around, the director tries his hand at the short film genre, delivering 11 shorts that are all based around the seemingly insignificant acts of drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.
In the first short, “Strange to Meet You,” Steven Wright and Roberto Benigni discuss the perks of cigarettes and coffee. In “Somewhere in California,” Iggy Pop nervously tries to befriend Tom Waits, who decides that he can have a cigarette because he just quit. Cate Blanchett delivers a towering dual-role performance in “Cousins,” playing both her Hollywood superstar self as well as her bitter cousin. In a similarly titled yet totally different short, Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan are brilliant in “Cousins?” And then there is “Delirium,” one of the best short films ever made, in which Rappers Rza and Gza (Wu-Tang Clan) discover that Bill Murray is a coffee addict, and they use their expertise to preach to him the benefits of alternative medicine.
Jarmusch builds to a poetic conclusion and the film is shot in an artistic black-and-white, making COFFEE AND CIGARETTES both an impressive work and a lighthearted, yet genuine, tribute to the art of smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.
