Stranger Than Paradise

1984 / 89min / DCP

Jarmusch announced himself as an independent auteur to watch with this bleakly funny black-and-white comedy played out in single set-ups, long takes, its nonaction set in slow-motion when Hungarian teenager Eszter Balint lands in the Lower East Side apartment of defiantly Americanized layabout cousin John Lurie, who extols the virtues of the TV dinner, and helps her to see the majesty of such exotic locales as Cleveland and Florida.