A collection of eleven comic sketches filmed over a period of almost two decades by Jim Jarmusch, all of them involving, if not actually revolving around, coffee and cigarettes (or in one case, tea and cigarettes) and the various restaurant tables on which these are arrayed. Each takes place in a new location with new characters, although certain ideas and actual lines of dialogue will recur. Each, too, observes strict formalities in its manner of presentation: black-and-white photography; the camera permitted only one direction of approach, as through a proscenium arch (one exception: the outward-looking angle on a sparking science-fictional gizmo); and every table, at least once, viewed from directly overhead (praise be to Godard!). Many in the motley cast -- Roberto Benigni, Steven Wright, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Cate Blanchett, Alfred Molina, Steve Coogan, Bill Murray, two members of the Wu-Tang Clan, former Warholian Taylor Mead, et al. -- play themselves, but not the Southern-accented Steve Buscemi, and Blanchett plays not only herself but also, in a brunette wig, her look-alike lower-class cousin. The last-mentioned skit is a virtuoso acting display, and it vies with the Molina-Coogan duet as the best of the bunch. All of them, however, have their little drolleries -- very little and very few, yet just enough to fend off boredom. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd
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