My Full review is up on the site. Solid middle ground for Jarmusch, but certainly not nearly so linear as they marketted it initially. I thought it was quite good.

B+

http://www.worldofkj.com/reviews/Galia/ ... lowers.php

I saw this awhile ago. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Though, I wish Sigourney Weaver could have played one of the ex-girlfriends.

I appreciated the realism of the movie. No happy ending, no real conclusion, etc. I especially loved the part with the pet communicator, and the part where the friend comes to get the "non-existent" list.

Grade: B+

C


If I did not say that it was not only this year's most disappointing, but also one of this year's worst movies, I would be lying.

It has been quite a while that an ending to a movie made me mad, simply mad. Actually the last time might have been The Village. Fortunately, I wasn't the only one thinking the same. I saw the movie in a well-filled theatre with at least 80-90 other people in it and when the screen faded to black, I could hear a couple of groans and discontent talking around me.

As for the movie itself, it must have been one of the dullest (not the worst, though) experiences I have had in a theatre since, well, Bad Education. I had a similar problem with this one as I had with the other. It just seemed very pointless with its intentions and was moving to nowhere most of the time. None of Don's encounters with his previous girlfriends impressed me. Funnily enough, there was one scene in this movie that I found outstanding and that actually touched me. It was the scene when Bill Murray lays down the flowers on the grave of his dead ex-girlfriend and sits down next to it with slight tears in his eyes. It was probably the only emotionally involving scene in the entire movie. All the other ones seemed pretty dull and hollow, especially emotions-wise.

Moreover, I haven't seen LiT or Life Aquatic, but I must say that from what I have seen in BF, I am not a big fan of Murray's being a deadpan with his face-expressions. Just didn't come across to me as great acting, but actually somewhat forced. So many scenes in this movie seem just to be space-fillers, like minute-long shots of Murray driving a car and so on. Pretentious, if you ask me. A positive aspect of the film, though, was its music (which was also pretty much the only thing I liked about Bad Education).

Out of the rest of the cast, the only one who made a good impression on me was Frances Conroy as Dora, the ex-hippie. The rest was pretty bland altogether. Just like the movie itself.

Jeffrey Wright was decent as Winston and provided a few laughs in this movie which, considering it's a dramedy, had neither enough comedy nor enough drama in it to be a satisfying experience. There was lots of potential and almost none of it was fully explored.

Don't even get me worked up abput the ending. I am not against abrupt endings like in Sideways or A History of Violence, but this one definitely did not seem of the kind that would need an unresolved ending because in the end we are just left with nothing. Even the main character, Don, does not get enough character development in the movie.

Jim Jarmush has been a hit/miss for me so far and this one continues the trend. I dispised A Night on Earth, but loved Ghost Dog. Dead Man is in the middle. I thought it was good, but not outstanding. Broken Flowers is definitely not as bad as A Night on Earth, but doesn't even come close to either Dead Man or Ghost Dog. One last thiong needs to be said and that is that Jim Jarmush has an excellent taste for music in his films. After Ghost Dog and Dead Man, Broken Flowers confirms it once again.

Certainly disappointing. Not a wreck, but not what I was hoping for. I still love Bill Murray, but even he can't save everything. I pretty much found everything wrong with it that Lecter did, except that I thought Murray was great as always. After watching "The Weatherman", I was certainly not hoping for another movie that just shows the characters sitting there and doing nothing for a period of time. I hate that. Sure, I'll watch Bill reading the paper for 30 minutes, but that's beside the point.

A decent effort in some ways, but overall, a letdown. Let this be an example of an unbiased opinion. I could have given this an A- for Bill Murray, but I don't grade that way. Even great actors have off movies, and this gets a C.

Here's a copy of my review from the "Foreign & Independent" forum:

I saw this a long time ago. It's not a movie for mainstream people, like most here. Recommended if you like the type of film, like I do.

9/10 (A-)

Hey now.

Plebeian...

I guess I'm just not as in love with deadpan Bill Murray as a lot of critics are. Combine that with Jarmusch's insistence upon unsatisfying ambiguity, and it really just amounts to a bit of a frustrating bore.

I was entertained by the slight encounters with the women, and I got what Jarmusch was trying to do with Murray's character, but in the end I found the arc of character study to have a whole lot less emotional weight than I thought it would.

Disappointing. B-

Not a movie I'd recommend to others, but I mostly enjoyed it. Watching Bill Murray interact with his old flames was entertaining, and I like the subdued Murray... he says a lot without saying much (like the dinner scene with the former hippie chick). My only complaint is that I felt the movie had a point, but was too dumb to figure it out. Then I watched the special features and the writer/director said that it wasn't his job to understand the movie, it was the job of the audience to figure it out... I thought that was odd. If the writer/director doesn't understand it, how am I supposed to?

Anyhow, I'll call it enjoyable with good performances, but pointless in the end. B

This is maybe the most boring and uninteresting movie I've seen from 2005. Murray is good but not more. What really angered me were the countless times where you just saw him driving. Was there a deeper meaning to that I didn't get?! Well... D.