Metrograph

Jarmusch announced himself as a thrillingly original deadpan humorist with this bleakly funny black-and-white comedy played out in single set-up long takes, its nonaction set into slow motion when Screamin’ Jay Hawkins-loving Hungarian teenager Eszter Balint lands in the Brooklyn apartment of defiantly Americanized layabout cousin John Lurie, who extols the virtues of the TV dinner and the NFL to her before they light out on a road trip to soak up the majesty of such exotic locales as Cleveland and Florida. (Quoth Richard Edson as the Lurie character’s tag-along pal: “They got pelicans down there, and flamingoes… All those weird birds.”)

Distributor: Janus Films