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

There are three things I can honestly say I've never experienced. A bad pizza, bad sex, or a bad movie with Steve Buscemi in it.This typically quirky Jim Jarmusch film consists of four overlapping stories whose characters, for better or for worse, all end up one night in a rundown Memphis hotel. A young Japanese couple making the rock and roll fan's obligatory pilgrimage; a recently widowed young Italian woman; a New Jersey transplant who's run out on her lover and is making her way back home; and three friends, including the latter's brother and her drunken, depressed ex, who have gotten themselves into a "situation".It's not just Buscemi - all members of this extraordinary cast, which includes Joe Strummer, Elizabeth Bracco, Rick Aviles, and two wonderful Japanese actors whom I've never heard of - plus the laugh out loud script, make this film a treat.

I'm not much of a fan of Jim Jarmusch, but 1989's Mystery Train (his fourth film and first one in color) is quite engaging in they way it tells three minimalist stories occurring in what is presumably the seedier side of Memphis. An Elvis motif runs through all the episodes, which are set mostly in a rundown hotel during one night (Blues legend Screaming Jay Hawkins plays the clerk). In the first episode, a young Japanese couple arrives in the town which gave birth to rock and roll (she is quirky, he is impassive; she loves Elvis, he Carl Perkins). In the second episode, an Italian woman (Niccoleta Braschi) whose husband has just died has to spend a night in Memphis. She shares the room in the hotel with a talkative American woman (Elizabeth Bracco). During the night, she imagines or sees the ghost of Elvis. In the third episode, a British guy who is called Elvis by his lowlife friends, and who has just broken with the woman of the second episode (and is played by the late Clash guitarist Joe Strummer) more or less accidentally shots a liquor shop seller, and has to take refuge in the hotel, along with his brother in law (played by Steve Buscemi). A gunshot heard during the night sort of links the three episodes. Nothing much happens, but Jarmusch shows his love with American pop culture and his fine ear for the way the American working class talk everyday.

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.