Verse
Donnelly, Marilyn P.
since she knows from the future that she is talking to a ghost. broken English, and plaintively looks at their two hostile mugs At such moments, Peggy Sue renews the genre of sci-fi...
...But, some massive Prime Moving...
...Turner, Coppola (who made does, though only into spring bayous whose leafless silhouthe Godfather films), and screenwriters Jerry Leichting and ettes at first remind us of prison bars...
...In truth, it is central...
...It could be titled The novators, he has but two modes: expressionist contrivance and Marx Brothers Go Cajun or The Three Stooges Meet Film minimalism...
...Roberto, aptly, lucks into love, but the two better...
...When the two are brought to jail World, mitigate my skepticism...
...At its best, Peggy Sue brilliantly synthesizes adventure, fool...
...with...
...After the escape, the trio has to wander across snake- and pop Americana, philosophy, and tender nostalgia...
...Like so many init the funniest film per dollar in years...
...It's a nice touch, but illustrates Jarmusch's probD OWN BY law cost only $1.4 million to make, which makes lem: his film doesn't end...
...and finally meet, Jarmusch keeps the camera static to em- Make of me a Matisse...
...To get his two Americans to jail, The portrayal of the group of high school students who grow Jarmusch has to stage two lengthy "temptation" scenes in up to be Peggy Sue's adult friends also has strengths and which they are lured into damning set-ups...
...The movie's beginning ransacks film noir, are too understated, as if the actors were straining to be ultra with dark, wasteland shots of streets deserted but for pimps, -cool...
...A welcome addition to the usual, stereotypical set is the audience off balance, and nicely prepares for the deflation one "commie beatnik" who drives a motorcycle and whom of the mock heroic in jail and after, Jarmusch's methods here Turner, with the wisdom of age, regards as a prophet of the are totally the opposite of those in later, laidback sections of Age of Aquarius around the comer...
...His story is simple: three cons trying to break jail, a mock heroic venture detailing some oddities of male camaraderie...
...Jarmusch doesn't let the camera move an travel, or rather penetrates past its mere adventurism to its inch, as if to say: now, or never, this film must open up...
...The photography is entirely, black and white...
...your dappled forest greens, choice for the New Orleans street scenes that serve as a Sun, splash me with shattered shafts of yellow_ backdrop for the petty, grubby hell of the American cons...
...To arrange for inertia, he has to do and adds some future notes on microchips and panty hose...
...Director Jim Jarmusch (celebrated for his cult hit are limiting...
...His immediate, impulsive spontaneity provides pure "steady" and later husband overacts both sixties teenage comic joy...
...I am a stretched canvas waiting to be painted...
...His boldest touch occurs as their new inmate ("Roberto, but you can calla me Bub'•') enters the cell, pleads for friendship in 10 October 1986: 535...
...wacky trio...
...Turner tells him her secret, overstate initial conditions...
...To allow his understatement to work, he has to physicist is treated interestingly...
...Coppola seems to have taken a very laid-back ap- Roberto who brings good luck, especially when he catches a proach to directing the actors, with mixed results...
...it evaporates...
...mannerisms and burnt-out adulthood...
...Some witty lines (try to Jarmusch's technique, however, can be contrived and catch the wordplay at a blues club on "treble without a cause") heavy-handed...
...except in his case, character portrayal is too conventional, Such a central contradiction is irksome...
...prostitutes, and petty crooks...
...One Sky, azure me with tenuous morning fight...
...But perhaps I am simply faulting the film for its deepest Americans walk off to face a fork in the road that recalls touch of pathos...
...Both are fruitful for Jarmusch, but both, as usual, Noir...
...is an ex-D.J...
...The problem is especially when suggesting that people never change for the evident at the end...
...It deeper impulse: to freeze aging...
...Arlene Sarner deserve high praise for using a popular vehicle "Bub" has a difficult time with his comrades, because of and wacko story line to say some important things about love their comically homonymous names (Waits is Jack and Lurie of one's family and a mature appreciation of what time costs Zack), because they often fight, and because they think he's a us...
...While rabbit and recalls his "Mama's" handy ways with such critTurner keeps her balance perfectly, Nicholas Cage as her ters...
...phasize their enclosure, tension, and hostility...
...Even a teenage "nerd the film...
...At first it seems realistic, but eventually it becomes symbolic, a perfect Ficus tree, come...
...broken English, and plaintively looks at their two hostile mugs At such moments, Peggy Sue renews the genre of sci-fi time for five minutes...
...Stranger Than Paradise two years ago) doesn't have that much TOM O'BRIEN to say, but he has found a droll mode of understatement that fits his meager content and even makes it seem larger...
...down on his luck (Tom Waits), the other a suave but stupid pimp (John Lurie...
...bug-infested swamps, where Jack, with unconscious irony, There are, however, a few defects, some incidental, some tells Roberto, "You're lucky to even be here...
...While this keeps defects...
...Roberto's allusion to "Bub" Frost's "The Road Less Traveled...
...Marilyn P. Donnelly What distinguishes Down By Law is not the story but the Visiting My Children photography, the offbeat situations, and the acting, particularly by Robert Benigno as an exuberant, poetic, inventive, Awaking at Maple Avenue in Cambridge and hilarious Italian immigrant at the center of Jarmusch's On a beige futon on the living room floor...
Vol. 113 • October 1986 • No. 17
