Smoke ’Em If You Got ’Em

Today finally sees the local release of Jim Jarmusch’s concept album on celluloid, Coffee and Cigarettes. A longtime Chicagoist favorite, Jarmusch has been making stylized, deadpan fish-out-of-water comedies for over twenty years now. (If you happen to have $40 still lying around – and what unemployed, blog-checking Chicagoan doesn’t? – do yourself a favor and buy Criterion’s DVD edition of his hilarious Down By Law.) This latest effort, eighteen years in the making, collects a number of shorts that capture people – and by “people,” we mean Iggy Pop or Roberto Benigni – just sitting around and enjoying the titular indulgences. Some of the sketches drag, mainly those in the middle starring non-famous people, but the good ones – namely those with pseudo-cousins Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan, married siblings Jack and Meg White, Bill Murray and Wu-Tang Clansmen RZA and GZA, and icons Bill Rice and Taylor Mead – really sizzle. It starts an exclusive engagement at the Music Box today. Chicagoist will be there, wondering why great movies open in our city weeks after playing to the philistines in New York and L.A.