Since this is a Jim Jarmusch film, that road is a slow, lingering, lonely one with minimalist music and many unhappy endings.
Broken Flowers (2005)
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Reviews Counted:181
Fresh:157
Rotten:24
Average Rating:7.5/10
Consensus: Bill Murray's subtle and understated style complements director Jim Jarmusch's minimalist storytelling in this quirky, but deadpan comedy.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for language, some graphic nudity and brief drug use
Runtime: 1 hr 46 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Aug 5, 2005 Limited
Box Office: $13,578,173
Synopsis: With BROKEN FLOWERS, staunchly independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch delivers one of his most pleasing, accessible pictures. Winner of the 2005 Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, the film tells... With BROKEN FLOWERS, staunchly independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch delivers one of his most pleasing, accessible pictures. Winner of the 2005 Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, the film tells the story of Don Johnston (Bill Murray), a man overflowing with wealth but void of emotion. On the day that his most recent girlfriend (Julie Delpy) has given up on him for good, he learns, through an anonymous letter, that he might be the father of a 19-year-old boy. Spurned into action by his wannabe private eye neighbor, Winston (Jeffrey Wright), Don sets off on a personal journey to visit the former partners who may or may not have mothered his child. They include the flighty Laura (Sharon Stone), whose daughter Lolita (Alexis Dziena) certainly lives up to her name; the uptight Dora (Frances Conroy), who has settled into a sterile life with her chipper husband, Ron (Christopher McDonald); the strangely distant Carmen (Jessica Lange), who makes a living as an "animal communicator;" and, finally, Penny (Tilda Swinton), a hard-edged biker who is the least happiest to see Don. Each confrontation leaves Don feeling more lost than the last, spinning him into an even greater state of apathetic confusion. In typical Jarmusch fashion, he wrote the script for BROKEN FLOWERS with his casting firmly in mind: only Murray could play this role. The result showcases Murray's brilliance as a less-is-more presence. Jarmusch also gives some of Hollywood's most talented female actresses roles they can relish. A hundred percent Jarmusch, BROKEN FLOWERS is a wry, tender, and bittersweet portrait of a man who is drifting aimlessly through life. [More]
Starring: Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Tilda Swinton
Starring: Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Tilda Swinton, Julie Delpy, Jessica Lange
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Screenwriter: Jim Jarmusch
Producer: Jon Kilik, Stacey E. Smith, Jim Jarmusch
Studio: Focus Features
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Reviews for Broken Flowers
With Broken Flowers, Jim Jarmusch's sly, touching new film, Bill Murray reaffirms his status as the quietest comic actor in movies today.
It kept me absorbed all the way through, especially the collaboration between acting auteur Bill Murray and Mr. Jarmusch in virtually every frame of the film.
It’s clear that Jarmusch is less concerned with resolving the “mystery” story than with the ways in which the process changes the initially reluctant Don.
It takes someone with Murray's reservoir of audience goodwill to make such a maddeningly passive character even worth watching.
Each encounter is a finely observed and beautifully performed vignette in its own right, but together they sketch out a past from which our grey Lothario has been irrevocably set adrift.
Has a good deal of off-handed charm and enough satirical moments..to sustain interest, but it's no more than Don Juan Lite, offering a veneer of profundity, lacking in payoff.
There's so much going on behind Murray's sad eyes that words aren't necassary. A great performance.
A wonderful collaboration between two unique talents, Broken Flowers perhaps isn’t for casual mainstream tastes, but it speaks eloquently to what’s broken in all of us.
This is a nice return to form for Jarmusch, for his quirky, casual style enlivens the material agreeably, and often hilariously, making for one of his best films to date.
The film's singlemindedness, like Murray's solipsism, keeps it from feeling fully formed.
... a beguiling excursion indeed ... for audiences who don't mind a movie that takes its time, keeps to the byways and delights in the twists of the road along the way ...
With such pointillist precision does Bill Murray create a portrait of the melancholic at midlife in Broken Flowers that he seems perfectly capable of painting The Last Supper with a single eyelash.
On this road trip, Bill Murray gets a little closure and we get a lot of laughs.
...an imperfect but sometimes beautiful comic story about a man helplessly lost in his own life.
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