Review of Coffee and Cigarettes (2004) by Shataroop D — 13 Aug 2011

I'm always very open to unconventional and avant-garde works of art, people, etc so this film definitely piqued my interest. It clearly parries every film school teaching regarding structure, but "some" episodes are comprised of everything a solid film should include.

Personally, I found the grandeur to take a roller coaster ride through the eps, with a general upward trend. There's no hesitation when saying that the actors are all awesome, notwithstanding if their characters match their talent; the cast, although pairings seem a desperately shocking and unusual, is irrefutably stellar.

I hated Iggy & Tom while I adored Blanchett and Coogan: your sentiments will fluctuate surely. Look, the concept is eccentric, and, as a contrived result, the characters are all eccentric; I like eccentricities, mostly because everyone is eccentric in their own way, but only when they're justifiable and not inundating the screen.

Some of the dialogue worked while others crashed&burned. I loved the sets: from the venues to the different mannerisms of drinking/smoking to the table setup... it kept everything very fresh given the monochrome filter.

The denouement was refreshingly suiting as the ambiguous beginning nettled us while the end supplied great, sagacious closure. At the end of this quirky melodrama, we find another common thread (or theme) besides coffee and cigarettes: people in this world are weird, eccentric, idiosyncratic, aberrant, whatever you'd like to call it, and guess what? That's utterly normal.