Stranger Than Paradise - (Jim Jarmusch;1984;USA/West Germany)
A New York hipster is visited by his Hungarian cousin. She moves in with her aunt in Cleveland, and soon joins him again for a trip to Miami.
The more I see, the more I feel Jim Jarmusch is probably the closest thing America has to John Cassavetes today. Like Cassavetes, Jarmusch is able to take relatively simple scenes that feel more like reality rather then a script, and make it immensely interesting to watch. That simplicity was evident in Coffee and Cigarettes. Here however, he gives us a portrait of disenchanted youth that ends with a wonderful feeling of poetic irony. Like Mean Streets was to Scorsese, this is a prime example of Jarmusch's style. The camera never moves save for one or two scenes, and each scene ends with a fade to black, feeling almost like a play.