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Information
- Year
- 1984
- Runtime
- 89 min.
- Director
- Jim Jarmusch
- Genres
- Drama, Comedy
- Rating *
- 7.6
- Votes *
- 20,856
- Checks
- 6,447
- Favs
- 606
- Dislikes
- 46
- Favs/checks
- 9.4% (1:11)
- Favs/dislikes
- 13:1
Top comments
-
Siskoid
A very early picture for Jim Jarmusch, Stranger Than Paradise tracks a teenage Hungarian immigrant, her New York-based cousin and his hapless friend in an immigrant story/road movie hybrid that defies convention to make a statement about its characters, and people like them. See, it doesn't matter where they are - New York, Cleveland, Florida - these three never find anything to do. Every place is the same, helped along by unglamorous locations and, in this case, drab black and white. Their lack of imagination makes it impossible for them to do anything new, regardless of their location, even though they feel restless where they are. Their whole lives are TV dinners. The guys even look like one another. It seems the best they can ever do is go back to where they started, and such returns enliven the third act. And perhaps this is also a statement on immigration, a kind of blank homesickness married to the boredom of not knowing anyone in a new place. Tourists have fun, immigrants have to get down to the mechanics of settling and making a living. It's a comedy, but a satirical one, letting the audience choose if they want to mock the characters low ambitions and idleness, or if they'd rather not, given their own predilections. 5 years 2 months ago -
Sunless
A critic once described Waiting for Godot as a play in which nothing happens twice. Stranger Than Paradise is a film in which nothing happens approximately seventy-five times. 9 years 5 months ago -
V012
Wow. I wish I had seen this in High School. Basic low budget film making ettiquete 9 years 8 months ago
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In 14 official lists
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This movie ranks #37 in Spike Lee's Essential List of Films for Filmmakers
Spike Lee's Essential Li…
37 -
This movie ranks #52 in Locarno Film Festival - Golden Leopard
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This movie ranks #79 in BFI's 100 Road Movies
BFI's 100 Road Movies
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This movie ranks #83 in BFI's 100 American Independent Films
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This movie ranks #88 in Akira Kurosawa's A Dream Is a Genius
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This movie ranks #96 in iCheckMovies's 1980s Top 100
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This movie ranks #367 in Library of Congress's National Film Registry
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This movie ranks #378 in TSPDT's 1,000 Greatest Films
TSPDT's 1,000 Greatest F…
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This movie ranks #442 in The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection
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This movie ranks #715 in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
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This movie ranks #779 in Jonathan Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema
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This movie ranks #835 in The New York Times's Book of Movies
The New York Times's Boo…
835 -
This movie ranks #854 in The Guardian's 1000 Films to See Before You Die
The Guardian's 1000 Film…
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This movie ranks #983 in Sight & Sound's The Greatest Films of All Time
Sight & Sound's The Grea…
983