The best John Lurie’s movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best John Lurie’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about John Lurie.
Paris, Texas
8.1/10
A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.
The Last Temptation of Christ
7.5/10
Jesus, a humble Judean carpenter beginning to see that he is the son of God, is drawn into revolutionary action against the Roman occupiers by Judas -- despite his protestations that love, not violence, is the path to salvation. The burden of being the savior of mankind torments Jesus throughout his life, leading him to doubt.
Wild at Heart
7.2/10
After serving prison time for a self-defense killing, Sailor Ripley reunites with girlfriend Lula Fortune. Lula's mother, Marietta, desperate to keep them apart, hires a hitman to kill Sailor. But he finds a whole new set of troubles when he and Bobby Peru, an old buddy who's also out to get Sailor, try to rob a store. When Sailor lands in jail yet again, the young lovers appear further than ever from the shared life they covet.
Down by Law
7.7/10
A disc jockey, a pimp and an Italian tourist escape from jail in New Orleans.
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain
7.7/10
An intimate, behind-the-scenes look at how an anonymous chef became a world-renowned cultural icon. This unflinching look at Anthony Bourdain reverberates with his presence, in his own voice and in the way he indelibly impacted the world around him.
Desperately Seeking Susan
6.1/10
Roberta is a bored suburban housewife who is fascinated with a woman, Susan, she only knows about by reading messages to and from her in the personals section of the newspaper. This fascination reaches a peak when an ad with the headline "Desperately Seeking Susan" proposes a rendezvous. Roberta goes too, and in a series of events involving amnesia and mistaken identity, steps into Susan's life.
Stranger Than Paradise
7.4/10
Rootless Hungarian émigré Willie, his pal Eddie, and visiting sixteen-year-old cousin Eva always manage to make the least of any situation, whether aimlessly traversing the drab interiors and environs of New York City, Cleveland, or an anonymous Florida suburb.
Blue in the Face
6.6/10
Auggie runs a small tobacco shop in Brooklyn, New York. The whole neighborhood comes to visit him to buy cigarettes and have some small talk. During the movie Lou Reed tries to explain why he has to have a cut on his health insurance bill if he keeps smoking and Madonna acts as a Singing Telegram.
Permanent Vacation
6.2/10
In downtown Manhattan, a twenty-something boy whose Father is not around and whose Mother is institutionalized, is a big Charlie Parker fan. He almost subconsciously searches for more meaning in his life and meets a few characters along the way.
New Rose Hotel
5.1/10
A corporate raider and his henchman use a chanteuse to lure a scientific genius away from his employer and family.
The Little Devil
6.9/10
Father Maurice, a priest living in a residential college for priests in Rome, is called out one day to "exorcise" the devil from someone. The devil turns out to be in the form of a fun-loving man called Giuditta. What Father Maurice doesn't know is that this type of devil will turn his life around.
Downtown '81
6.9/10
The film is a day in the life of a young artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, who needs to raise money to reclaim the apartment from which he has been evicted. He wanders the downtown streets carrying a painting he hopes to sell, encountering friends, whose lives (and performances) we peek into.
Just Your Luck
5.5/10
Six million dollars suddenly goes up for grabs when an aged diner's heart fails after he discovers that he has won the lottery. Which of the remaining late-night dining regulars will get the cash? How many will have to die to get the answer?
Blank City
7.1/10
In the years before Ronald Reagan took office, Manhattan was in ruins. But true art has never come from comfort, and it was precisely those dire circumstances that inspired artists like Jim Jarmusch, Lizzy Borden, and Amos Poe to produce some of their best works. Taking their cues from punk rock and new wave music, these young maverick filmmakers confronted viewers with a stark reality that stood in powerful contrast to the escapist product being churned out by Hollywood.
Subway Riders
5.7/10
A psychotic saxophone player (played both by Amos Poe and John Lurie) lures victims to deserted spots with his music and then guns them down.
The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
9.2/10
Nan Goldin's slide show “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” converted, mixed and screened as a film by the artist, portraying the American underground culture, the no wave scene, post-Stonewall gay subculture, among others.
TV Party
6.9/10
From 1978 to 1982, Glenn O'Brien hosted a New York city public access cable TV show called TV Party. Co-hosted by Chris Stein, from Blondie, and directed by filmmaker Amos Poe, the hour long show took television where it had never gone before: to the edge of civility and "sub-realism" as Glenn would put it. Walter Steding and his TV Party "Orchestra" provided a musical accompaniment to the madness at hand, and many artists and musicians, from The Clash, Nile Rodgers, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Bryne and Arto Lindsey were regular guests. It was the cocktail party that could be a political party. With 80 hours of disintegrating 3/4 inch videotape as a starting point, we tracked down the trend setting participants still living today and found out what they remember of the period and how the show influenced their lives. This, combined with clips from the orginal show, became the documentary "TV Party.
5 Sides of a Coin
8.1/10
"5 Sides of a Coin" is a comprehensive overview of the worldwide cultural movement of Hip-Hop.
Red Italy
Second feature film by the French-born director is a Bertolucci-style story of a bored, rich woman looking for romance and adventure. She meets an American G.I., dumps him, then falls for a Communist worker.
Underground U.S.A.
5.1/10
The Sunset Blvd. of underground cinema, and a suitably ambivalent retrospect on the star-game casualties of New York's upper depths, with Patti Astor statuesquely hysterical as a 20-year-old Norma Desmond, made up to recall Edie Sedgwick and surrounded by Warhol's lost children. We've been here before, but without the hindsight: a camera cruise along a hustler's meat-rack, kitchen-talk over cold canned spaghetti, Taylor Mead grimacing in a spastic dance, the silent stud a sullenly passive observer. Mitchell's ear for campy native wit and eye for figures in a loft-scape happily keep at bay the otherwise contagious NY ennui.
