Broken Flowers

Though it gets off to a painfully slow start, and the cinematography is decidedly lackluster, this latest offering from Jim Jarmusch winds up being touching and inventive. Bill Murray plays an erstwhile Don Juan who discovers that he may have a 20-year-old son. Going on a cross-country quest to find the boy’s mother, he learns about life and love and those special feelings that you get when you look to the West and your spirit is crying for leaving. The dialogue is sparse and painfully apt, and the ending is tremendous (not to spoil it, but Bill Murray is Luke’s father), but you really have to slog through the misguided opening sections. Drink a cup of coffee or set your watch alarm for 30 minutes after the start of the film, and you’ll receive the kind of cinematic pleasure that is rarely found outside of Ingmar Bergman’s red, velvet love den.