Good movie but grossly overrated

A Disappointing Continuation

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I really don't like art movies but this one is very interesting,in a bucolic and already decadent Memphis three stories happen in same time with different an unusual characters crossing their destiny in a cheap hotel,each one didn't are connected but all them acting so close like a parallel world,just Dee Dee has a little link with some them,the music score is fabulous as opening "Mistery Train" the best,Memphis is a kind of Rock'n Roll's Meca,survives from their past idols that addressed mainly to Elvis due cause he lived there,fantastic Jarmush picture!!Resume:First watch: 1991 / How many: 2 / Source: TV-DVD / Rating: 8.25

The movie has all the recognizable characteristics of Jim Jarmusch, which make him one of my favorite directors, but this time the story left me totally indifferent. Maybe the story is meaningless and empty, and maybe I did not get it right. Either way, this movie doesn't inspire me at all to write about it.6/10For interested, Michael Sean's review is very good.

Looking at the critics of Jarmusch's films, it seems that there are people who think that his movies are slow, boring and tedious. I am not one of these people. I even like Permanent Vacation quite a lot.But Mystery Train didn't work for me. I kept looking at the remaining running time of the video and was glad when it was over. It is hard to pinpoint the reasons, but I will try.I was doing fine throughout the first segment. The second segment was still alright, until the two ladies met at the hotel and decided to rent a room together. Here, my interest in the plot hit a low point. To make us watch – again – two people in an almost identical room, while we hardly got to know the characters, just seemed like a bad decision. It felt tedious. While I rather liked the juxtaposition of the European and the North American type of personality that are represented in those two ladies, the movie seemingly started to repeat itself. The third segment made me wish the movie would end soon.The music, which is essential in other Jarmusch films, is not as impressive in this one. It does help to build an atmosphere here and there, but some specific songs and even their announcement in the radio are repeated over and over again.Repetition seems to be the main feature of the structure of this film. Maybe Jarmusch did not want to comply with the usual kind of expectations. While I can understand this in an intellectual way, my stomach feels painfully tense.I liked the eccentric people, the locations (until they started to show up again) and the cinematography. The two clerks were funny, but they couldn't make me feel more interested in what was going on in their hotel.To sum it up: this movie doesn't go anywhere. It keeps circling around an old hotel, inhabited by some more or less interesting characters, and that's it. The three segments do not culminate in some kind of memorable conclusion, instead, everybody just goes their own way. I don't need a plot to enjoy a movie. But without a plot, there just wasn't anything interesting left in this one.

After falling in love with Jarmusch's most recent film, Broken Flowers, I thought perhaps the door would be open and I would learn to love the rest of his films. Unfortunately, watching Mystery Train, I feel the same distance that I have felt watching most of his other films. Don't get me wrong, there are some wonderful things about Mystery Train, and, overall, I liked it more than I did Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law. But I always felt like I should be liking it a lot more, and I just never felt much more than a nice affection for the movie. The film contains three segments about people in Memphis, Tennessee. I especially liked the first one, which has two Japanese tourists there to visit Sun Records and Graceland. The second segment I liked less, which involves an Italian widow and a motormouth American she runs into. The third I liked slightly better than the second, and slightly less than the first. It involves three guys (one of them being Steve Buscemi), one of whom has a loaded gun and is drunk (who is not Steve Buscemi). All three stories meet up at a flophouse run by Screamin' Jay Hawkins (famous for recording the song "You Put a Spell on Me") and a goofy little bellboy played by Spike Lee's brother, Cinqué. I really liked those two. The whole film is mysterious and charming, with a bit of magic in the air, but somehow, for me at least, it didn't result in too much.