1. Ghost Dog
2. Broken Flowers
3. Stranger Than Paradise
4. Down By Law
5. Dead Man

Well, to be honest, I've only seen the five. Three (numbers 3-5) of them I've watched in the last month or so.

The only one that tested my patience was Dead Man, which started really well, but petered out. The longer "Nobody" was in the film, the more it seemed to lose track of any point at all.

Down By Law is ace, and would be higher were it not for the fact that Roberto Benigni is more than a litle annoying as an actor. Lurie and Waits are brilliant though.

Loved Stranger than Paradise - who is this John Lurie and why hasn't he become better known?

He's a musician, a very interesting one too. The Legendary Marvin Pontiac is one of my favourite albums of the past few years.

Haven't seen it for a very long time but I always liked Mystery Train. It's done with three seperate stories intertwining. Sometimes you see the same incident but through different eyes. It kind of annoyed me when Tarantino got a load of plaudits a few years later, for doing exactly the same thing in Pulp Fiction.

Night on Earth (but not, if you don't link Benigni)
Smoke

Yeah, I find Benigni pretty annoying too (I couldn't stand Life Is Beautiful) but there's four other stories in Night On Earth that don't have his manic mugging. My favourite is the Helsinki one.

Smoke? Jarmusch didn't direct that but did give a very funny performance in the semi-improvised companion film, Blue In The Face.
(Or did you mean Coffee & Cigarettes?)

Loved Mystery Train, particularly Joe Strummer's acting. Ghost Dog and Coffee & Cigarettes are probably my two fav Jarmusch films. Particularly like Steve Coogen and Alfred Molina's bit in the latter, as well as Bill Murray's cameo with two of the Wu Tang Clan.
Didn't like Broken Flowers when I went to see it. Probably just fed up of Bill Murray at that time though.

1. Down By Law
2. Mystery Train
3. Stranger Than Paradise
4. Dead Man

Just a top 4 for me. I love the early Jarmusch stuff but it's been a case of diminishing returns in recent years. And I'm not bothered about seeing Dead Man again, so it's a top 3 really.

Having said that, I love Down By Law and Mystery Train. Two films I could never get tired of watching. I even looked out for some of the places in Mystery Train when I went to Memphis a few years back. I do admire his commitment to independent film. He's never made a studio picture, but is able to call on big studio stars (who presumably take a huge pay cut) to appear in his movies. There aren't too many other directors around who've managed to get into a similar position.

As a side note, I once saw Jarmusch in lower Manhattan. He's not hard to spot. This was just before Broken Flowers came out and he was carrying around some big film canisters. He almost got hit by a car when he was crossing the street. And there ends another unremarkable tale of celebrity spotting.

I liked Mystery Train a lot when I saw it, but that was about 15 years ago at 3 in the morning back when the Ritzy in Brixton still used to do all-nighters. So that's probably my favourite. I have time for Ghost Dog and Dead Man and Night on Earth without actually liking them a great deal, if that makes sense. I didn't bother with Broken Flowers. I kind of feel that Jarmusch is kind of in my past, like with Wim Wenders or Hal Hartley or John Sayles or various others.

I'm glad you're getting joy out of Ghost Dog, Jimski.
If my copy hadn't gone to you it would have gone in the bin. Pretensious, overblown, ridiculous and annoying rubbish.
Has put me off watching anything else of his completely.

1) Stranger Than Paradise - The weirdest night I had in NYC was filing a movie in the Lower East Side, when I ended talking to a Vietnam Vet they called "Jungle" who turned out to be a hitman, then seeing Greg "The Hammer" Valentine, then seeing the two actors from Stranger Than Paradise dressed exactly as they were in the film (fedoras, bowling shirts, etc.)

2) Mystery Train - This proved Jarmusch could work wonders with color. He's a man who loves southern towns, and captured Memphis beautifully.

3) Dead Man - I had the opportunity to screen this many times when I was a projectionist, and loved everything about it. While Roger Ebert called Neil Young's soundtrack "unfortunate" and that it sounded like "he dropped his guitar," I could listen to it all day. I loved the ending, Robert Mitchum, the blowjob scene, and the cinematography.

4) Ghost Dog - Great choice to use the RZA, and basically Wu Tang as an influence. It's as if he made the first Wu Muvie.

5) Broken Flowers - Some of Jarmusch's most touching scenes. Bill Murray in the graveyard may be the best scene he ever had. Absolutely crushing. Maybe even the best scene of Jarmusch's career (next to the lipstick scene in Mystery Train)

The "I scream for Ice Cream" scene ruined Down By Law for me, and I hated Night on Earth.

However, Jarmusch is a reason I wanted to become a filmmaker. He's someone who understands America better than most, and is one of our most essential artists.

Well, I've now watched Mystery Train and it was dead good. Straight in at number two with a bullet. As jv says, the use of colour is amazing, especially for someone who previously primarily used b&w.

One of the weirder aspects of Mystery Train was how all 3 stories deal with foreigners dealing with Memphis. From Joe Strummer (England) to Nicola Braschi (Italy) to Masatoshiu Nagase & Youki Kudoh (Japan.)

Each one is challenged by the city at some point (The Japanese challenged by understanding the Sun Studios tourguide - a great touch as that's really how they talk in Tennessee, the Italian challenged by the dark city streets and unsavory characters, and Joe Strummer challenged by Steve Buscemi - who would challenge anyone.)

Each also is delivered and accepted by the city, and given a memorable story to take home with them.

It's one of the rare unpretentious & unmawkish love letters to a city. It's as if he learned from Down By Law and it's depiction of New Orleans, what to focus on and what to eliminate (namely, the "I scream for ice cream" scene.)