Mystery Train Jim Jarmusch Digital Life VHS

Mystery Train
starring: Masatoshi Nagase, Youki Kudoh, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Cinqué Lee, Rufus Thomas
directed by: Jim Jarmusch

Used Price: $0.99

Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 0027616804402
Format: NTSC
Label: MGM Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: MGM Home Entertainment
Publisher: MGM Home Entertainment
Sales Rank: 117544
Studio: MGM Home Entertainment
Theatrical Release Date: 1990-01

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.com:
Elvis may not be alive, but his spirit continues to permeate the American cultural landscape. Jim Jarmusch pays tribute his legacy in his funky third feature, Mystery Train. The name comes from the great bluesy recording Elvis made for Sun Records in 1955, but the stories of wandering tourists and lost souls drifting through Memphis come from the mind of Jarmusch. Three different tales play out in a single 24-hour period, a loose trilogy spinning around a fleabag hotel manned by a sleepy Screamin' Jay Hawkins and his eager bellboy Cinqué Lee. A young Japanese couple arrives in Memphis to take the Elvis tour, an Italian woman (Nicoletta Braschi of Life Is Beautiful) takes possession of her dead husband's ashes and gets a surprise visit from a wandering spirit, and three Memphis lowlifes (including indie stalwart Steve Buscemi and Clash guitarist Joe Strummer) take an aimless and ultimately fateful midnight cruise around town. Jarmusch lazily unfolds his tales at the speed of life, the unhurried rhythms lending the deadpan mix of quirky Americana, pop culture, and cinematic poetry a quietly lived-in quality, while he juggles timelines in a trick Quentin Tarantino borrowed for Pulp Fiction. The offbeat interweaving is just another pattern to the crazy quilt, lovely examples of the mercurial playfulness of life in Jarmusch's America. --Sean Axmaker

Digital Life Reviews

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Elvis' Ghost Takes a Mystery Train
In three short vignettes, visitors of Memphis travel to the decrepit world of Elvis the King. A Japanese couple come the US to see Memphis for the King. The woman is entranced even by the run down ugliness of the Memphis train station and the deteriorating city. Her boyfriend is more interested in Carl Perkins. One visit to a tourist trap (Sun Records) leaves them deflated as they attempt to listen to a tour guide who speaks too fast for them the comprehend even basic concepts in English. Memphis may have the king but Memphis is not the most welcoming city on the planet. In the second story, an Italian woman who stops overnight from a trip back to Rome ends up into being suckered into buying an enormous number of magazine and newspapers and paying for an American woman's hotel room for the night. She shows the hospitality that the Americans don't seem to share. The third story involves three losers who go ... Read More

Rating:

- Jarmusch's best film
I'm not much of a fan of Jim Jarmusch, but 1989's Mystery Train (his fourth film and first one in color) is quite engaging in they way it tells three minimalist stories occurring in what is presumably the seedier side of Memphis. An Elvis motif runs through all the episodes, which are set mostly in a rundown hotel during one night (Blues legend Screaming Jay Hawkins plays the clerk). In the first episode, a young Japanese couple arrives in the town which gave birth to rock and roll (she is quirky, he is impassive; she loves Elvis, he Carl Perkins). In the second episode, an Italian woman (Niccoleta Braschi) whose husband has just died has to spend a night in Memphis. She shares the room in the hotel with a talkative American woman (Elizabeth Bracco). During the night, she imagines or sees the ghost of Elvis. In the third episode, a British guy who is called Elvis by his lowlife friends, and who has just broken with ... Read More

Rating:

- Quiet, beautiful, funny, friendly - touching
This movie, woven around two Japanese kids looking for Elvis more or less, in some nondescript Southern city - I don't know what to say. The city itself is protrayed emotionally flat - kind of like what you'd see on a trip to your own drugstore. But that makes it all the more intriguing.

There's several stories going on, woven around the quest for Elvis.

The places seemed too familiar - and I found myself wondering if I'd been to those place, met those people ... but I haven't - and won't - until I watch this flick again, which I will.

It's too much of a friendly place not to return. Set off by hints of larceny, physical danger and sex, and where we find that we can take these people's quest for Elvis in stride.

Rating:

- Elvis! No, Carl Perkins! No, Elvis! No, Carl Perkins!
Mystery Train follows three stories through the heat of dreary summertime Memphis. Two Japanese teens dressed to the nines in 80s couture explore Memphis on a quest to determine once and for all whether Elvis or Carl Perkins was the true king of American rock and roll. They are awkwardly out of place amongst the townsfolk, but even more out of place with each other. She constantly jokes and jokes with him, at one point smearing lipstick across his face, only to be continuously ignored as he stares coolly into the distance. Their depressing love making scene in the seedy hotel where all the characters end up underscores the distance between them.

An Italian woman has an unexpected layover in Memphis related to the seemingly sudden and unexplained death of her husband. She tries to quietly navigate her way through the town, but is faced with con artists at every turn. She ends up sharing a room in the seedy ... Read More

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