Amazon and Bleecker have decided to wait another three months — 12.28 — to open Jim Jarmusch‘s Paterson. So cool your jets and bide your time. But know this: Paterson is one of those films that improve upon reflection. It doesn’t seem to be doing a hell of a lot while you’re watching it, but then it begins to expand. The next day you’re saying “yeah, still thinking about it…good film.” A week later you’re saying “wow, that was a really good film.”

From my 5.16.16 Cannes Film Festival review:

“Paterson is about a lanky young bus driver (Adam Driver) and his Iranian wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) who live with a subversive prick dog named Marvin in a small dumpy house in Paterson, New Jersey and generally follow routines of almost astounding modesty — not hanging with friends, not partying, not doing Manhattan clubs on weekends…none of that.

“Well, maybe Laura would like a little fun and frolic but Driver’s guy, who of course is also named Paterson, doesn’t even own a smart phone. All he wants is to write poetry in a little composing book. During work breaks, evenings in the cellar. Not to become ‘famous’ but to one day write one-half or even one-third as well as famed Paterson poet William Carlos Williams.

“The quiet writing life and a general reverence for poetry becomes more and more of a thing as the film develops. Paterson itself is trying to be a kind of small, minimalist poem.

“I’m presuming there are hundreds of thousands of youngish or middle-aged people out there who are more or less content to live modest lives of regularity and security in minor, out-of-the-way burghs. There are, of course, many more who dream of The Life Kardashian — fame, stardom, super-wealth. So in this era of grotesque values you have to chuckle if not guffaw about Jim Jarmusch having made a film that basically says (a) ‘fuck all that,’ (b) ‘turn it down and plant spiritual growth seeds’ and (c) ‘dare to be dull in the ironic sense of that term.’

“I for one respected what it was up to. The commitment, the quietude. Jarmusch certainly knows the realm and how to tailor his film so it feels like it came from notebook jottings and not from a novel or short story or even a screenplay.”