Paterson (Jim Jarmusch, 2016)

Jarmusch, a poet of blue-collar smalltown Americana, returns to his knitting with a bare story of a humdrum week in the life of a bus driver who sees poetry in the everyday minutiae of the world around him. The days unfold with small variations around fixed points such as his nightly walk with the dog to a bar, and show the director's gift at picking out the little character quirks that make commonplace people of interest. There are recurring motifs, but they're not rammed down the viewer's throat to convert them into explicit metaphors for anything: it's all about allusion rather than definition. This is both liberating in its non-prescriptiveness and also frustrating in that it's so non-committal, just like its diffident titular character. Still, it's a welcome return from a filmmaker who continues to bring something singular to the table when so many others lose their distinctive virtues under the temptation of conformity to be bigger and faster.

7/10