Night on Earth [Region 2] | Gena Rowlands, Winona Ryder | Quite possibly one of the best American...

Night on Earth [Region 2] | Gena Rowlands, Winona Ryder | My favourite movie of all time

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Night on Earth [Re...

	Night on Earth [Region 2] Gena Rowlands, Winona Ryder average customer review:based on 61 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Quite possibly one of the best American films of the 1990s

As with many of Jarmusch's films (Coffee & Cigarettes, Ghost Dog, Down by Law, Ghost Dog, etc.), Night on Earth is simultaneously endearing and mindboggling. The film centers around five short cab rides in five international cities in a single night. From a lurid confession in a Roman cab (with Roberto Begnini) to an impromptu audition in LA (with Gena Rowlands and Winona Ryder) to a hysterical ride through New York with a retired East German clown (Armin Mueller-Stahl), this film will keep you laughing, crying, and thinking so deeply, that all you want to do is rewind and watch this night again (yes, rewind, because alas... it is not available on DVD!!!)

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My favourite movie of all time

Night on Earth is the best movie ever made as far as I'm concerned. Put simply, it is a view of life as seen through the perspective of 5 different taxi cab rides during the course of one night. The casting is perfect (Roberto Benigni, Giancarlo Esposito and Winona Ryder are particularly 'right'), it contains a multitude of subtle and not-so subtle messages (all of which are overwhelmingly positive, unlike most movies that are made in the west) and it runs at a gorgeously gentle pace that gives you plenty of room to think. So few movies do this; they spend so much time trying to get tons of 'stuff' on the screen that they forget to actually have a point. Tom Waits' music is fantastic too... Jim Jarmusch will always be a god in my eyes for making this...

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"Night on Earth" provides you both comedy and drama.

Being that this film was recommended to me, I have never seen a film directed by Jim Jarmusch and this was a good place to start. "Night on Earth" contains 5 stories mostly happening inside a taxi cab located in 5 different cities spanning between 30-40min long. The cab rides in this film take place at approximately the same time, but the stories couldn't be more different. The lighter conversations take place in the first few segments and as we enter the smaller hours of the morning, the conversations become a little heavier. I enjoyed this film a lot coming from the first segment in L.A. to the final segment in Helsinki.

Three of the five segments are not in English and it would be a shame if you bypass this film because of it. The characters are all truly amazing, in some films it takes virtually the whole dramatization to attain the feeling that you familiarized with the characters, in one way or the other. In some films, you never even come close to such an accomplishment. But in this one, however, you merely need a brief cab ride to really feel the presence and the acquaintance.

Apart from enjoying all the cab rides, I exceptionally laughed and yet sincerely fathomed the tragedy of the New York ride. The situation Helmut, a German immigrant, finds himself in is really sorrowful, as it is very comical as well. For a reason beyond comprehension he has though his bad English and very severe driving accomplished to obtain a taxi driver card in a city he practically doesn't know the name of. Somewhat accidentally he managed to pick up Yo-Yo, an energetic, talkative & very amusing New Yorker. Two greatly distinct cultures persuaded to make conversation is extremely charming, interesting & humorous, though they can hardly understand each others nature they still manage to somewhat interpret each other in a very abstruse way. The Paris chapter concentrates on a black cab driver who is made fun of by foreign (and also black) dignitaries. He is proud, until later he finds a cynical blind woman and he becomes curious about her. It's not extraordinary but it clearly held my interest. Rome is a straight out comedy that I could not stop laughing. Especially, Robert Benigni who speaks very quickly in this film acting absolutely perfect in Rome's story. His monologue to the priest in the back seat of the cab - even when read, not heard - is hysterically funny, with Benigni giving the perfect blend of absurdum and sincerity. You can't tell whether he is telling the truth or not. In Helsinki (Finland) you meet three drunks that get into a cab, one of whom has had the worst day imaginable. Then the cabbie tells a tale of his own, and it puts the unlucky drunk's problems in proper perspective that will deeply touch your heart. The least of my favorites would likely be the L.A. segment with Gena Rowlands and Winona Ryder because both of there performance seem wooden, force, and unconvincing to me. After you get through the rough patches of their segment the rest of the way is ridden smoothly.

Other than that, "Night on Earth" is a nice collaboration of tragic & comic wrapped up in five different destinies, neither containing a beginning or a goal, merely an embracing of time, an embracing of life.

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Three out of five of the stories in this are funny

It's five stories about five cab drivers and their passengers (one fare) in five different cities (two in America & three in Europe). It all happens in one night. I liked three of them. I didn't like the one in Los Angeles or Helsinki much. The funnest one was Rome. The cabbie picks up a priest and tells him a perverted confession. The Paris and New York is good too. In New York, a Black man gets picked up by an Eastern European cabbie who shouldn't be behind the wheel and the Paris one is a cabbie who picks up a cantankerous blind young woman. Those stories are amusing too. The three stories will make 90 minutes. The cabbie in Rome is worth the rental price and the three stories is about 90 minutes. So you have a short movie if you just watch the three I liked. You might want to give it a viewing.

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aight

movie is split in 5 sections/cab rides... one in la, one in ny, one in france, etc.
L.A. with Winona was really sleepy and was kinda lame, the NY was over acted and super stereotypical... france was cool kinda real, rome was insane (roberto benigni was funny, a little annoying, and rather unbeliveable), and hellsinki was pretty real. really could have used a narative or something to tie it together. it's worth a watch mainly for the 2nd half of the movie.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

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