Forest Whitaker hasn’t played too many lead roles in his career, but when he does — as in Clint Eastwood’s Bird, for example — he absolutely holds the screen in the palm of his hand. Jim Jarmusch wrote Ghost Dog with the actor in mind, and exploring interests like Asian philosophy, samurai culture, hiphop, post bop jazz and the decline of the mafia crime families in New York City — “but always with Forest at the centre.” Ghost Dog is a professional assassin for the mob, but he’s also an existential loner who adheres to his personal code (like Alain Delon in Melville’s film Le Samourai). And he’s a bit of an intellectual. Someone engaged by art and ideas. Despite the thriller trappings, this is really a lampoon of that genre, and a melancholy reverie for the cultural melting pot that we call home.
Ghost Dog has retained all of the cool, the quirk, the profundity it captured in a bottle in 1999…
Ed Travis, Cinapse
Less a pastiche than a mastermix from a cinematic DJ at the height of his formalist powers.
Glenn Kenny, Premiere
Media Partner
Jim Jarmusch
Forest Whitaker, John Tormey, Cliff Gorman, Henry Silva, Victor Argo
USA
1999
In English and French with English subtitles
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
Richard Guay, Jim Jarmusch
Screenwriter
Jim Jarmusch
Cinematography
Robby Müller
Editor
Jay Rabinowitz
Original Music
RZA
Production Design
Ted Berner
90s, Baby!
Ten years. 11 weeks. 90 films from the 1990s. This summer, 90’s Baby! takes a deep dive into a defining decade of cinema.
Casino
Revisiting the wise guy milieu for the third (but not the final) time, Scorsese tells the story of Ace Rothstein and Nicky Santoro (Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci), two New York hoodlums who become major players in the history of Las Vegas.
Ghost in the Shell
This seminal anime which inspired James Cameron and the Wachowskis, anticipates how AI technology encroaches on the human domain in ways we can scarcely comprehend. "A work of profound and melancholic beauty." Daily Telegraph
La Haine
This angry French thriller about alienated kids (a skinhead, an Arab, and an African) in the working class outskirts of Paris plays like a cross between Do the Right Thing and Mean Streets. French cops turned their backs on the red carpet at Cannes.
Crash
Sex drive, David Cronenberg-style. The car-crash fetishists who orbit Cronenberg's metrosexual Toronto (they include James Spader, Holly Hunter, and Deborah Unger) obsessively seek a fusion of metal and flesh... Fender bender as the ultimate orgasm.
Trainspotting
Danny Boyle's blistering movie was a sensation in 1996: a kick in the teeth of old school British kitchen sink realism, it fearlessly transformed the dire circumstances of Edinburgh heroin addicts into an experience by turns exhilarating and devastating.
Fargo
Have the Coen brothers ever made a more satisfying movie than Fargo? This grisly comedy pits one of cinema's most pure-hearted cops (Frances McDormand's pregnant cop, Marge Gunderson) against the machinations of weak and mercenary men.
Lone Star
John Sayles's modern day Western is a murder mystery which draws sheriff Chris Cooper to investigate two of his predecessors, the notoriously corrupt Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson), and his own father, Buddy (Matthew McConaughey).
90s Mystery Movie + Trivia Night
And now for a shot in the dark... We're not announcing the Mystery Movie in advance, so you'll have to take a leap of faith. We can say it was released between January 1990 and January 2000, and it's not already showing elsewhere in this series. As an added enticement we're going to throw in a 90s movie trivia night with your ticket — plus prizes!
Princess Mononoke
A mystical fight between humans and the Animal Gods of the forest. Ashitaka, the last prince of a dying race, struggles to find a way for both sides to co-exist. But the fighting only becomes more and more bloody and all hope seems to be lost…
Gummo
Harmony Korine was just 24 when he made Gummo. It's become a cult favourite as much for its singularity as anything else: it's a strange, misshapen beast, a slice of beat poetry translated into experimental film.
Jackie Brown
Take half a dozen characters who know they're in a fix, and give them half a million dollars to fight over. Tarantino's crime movie (his best) transcends genre in large part because in Pam Grier and Robert Forster it gives us people we truly care about.
The Big Lebowski
The Coens' whacky, warped slacker generation riff on Raymond Chandler, a shaggy dog story which delights in going sideways at every turn. Jeff Bridges is the Dude, and what he really wants is to get his rug back...