This movie is often presented as a Memphis-based anthology where all the stories come together in the end, but that's only half true. The character stay in their own segments without meeting each other (with one fairly redundant exception), the only thing that connects them all is that they stay in the same hotel and all end up hearing the same gunshot. And I beg you: don't keep watching to see where the gunshot comes from, it's not worth it. Are there other reasons to keep watching? There are. The last segment is arguably the best, mainly because at least it does have some sort of plot and features the likes of Joe Strummer (yeah, the one from The Clash) and Steve Buscemi. There are some funny lines in there, and Vondie Curtis-Hall (who would go on to direct "Gridlock'd") is pretty awesome in it as well. Most people actually disagree with this though and like the first segment far more, but I couldn't get into it all. It features two Japanese tourists...being Japanese tourists for 40 minutes. Writer/Director Jim Jarmusch does give them some interesting traits and it's a cute couple, but 40 minutes of this? It's not like this is all setting up something, they have nothing to do with the rest of the segments. I'll take Joe Strummer robbing a liquor store any time. The second segment is probably the least interesting to discuss, because most people aren't particularly fond of it and neither am I. It's not filler, but it's not very entertaining either. "Mystery Train" didn't thrill me nearly as much as I thought it would, but I guess the last segment does make it worthwhile.

Director Jim Jarmusch continues to indulge his fascination with America's cultural residue, this time going directly to one of the more reliable sources: Memphis, Tennessee, home of the Once and Future King himself, Elvis Presley. Like other Jarmusch films it's a deadpan, deadbeat sampling of offbeat Americana, seen by outsiders on the inside looking out: an Elvis-idolizing Japanese tourist and her cool, catatonic boyfriend; a young Italian widow who receives a ghostly visitation from the King; and an expatriate English drop-out bearing an unfortunate resemblance to the Man From Memphis. It's certainly the most tightly controlled of the director's features to date, but at the same time the most relaxed and disarming. All the action (what little there is) takes place in and around a dilapidated downtown hotel over the course of a single night, with each episode occurring simultaneously but told in sequence, connected only by the repetition of otherwise incidental details. It may not add up to anything more than a shaggy dog joke, but (in its own offhand way) the film works, with Robby Muller's atmospheric photography providing a wonderfully effective after-hours ambiance.

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.

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.