The only Jim Jarmusch film available in this category on Netflix (The Limits of Control can be found elsewhere), Dead Man is the sixth picture from perhaps the most cult of all contemporary directors. Starring a great Johnny Depp as William Blake (so named after the poet), Dead Man is a subversive, postmodernist Western, a "psychedelic" one according to its director. It draws from numerous influences - notably the literature of Cormac McCarthy - and boasts an all-star cast (Billy Bob Thornton, Gabriel Byrne, Robert Mitchum) as well as a gorgeous, guitar-led soundtrack by Neil Young, who improvised parts of it while watching the movie play out. A deliberately abstract film, it's far from the director's most accessible work, and its slow, hypnotic nature is likely to either infuriate or enchant you. At two-hours, Dead Man could do with some trimming, and those likely to be the former of the two states of emotion I suggested in the sentence prior will no-doubt use "boring" as an overall assessment of the film. Boring is a reductive way to talk about a movie, though, and while it's easy to see where those claims are coming from (Dead Man really is slow), it's far more instructive to ask yourself why you felt bored by it rather than how it bored you.
