Not even bad in a good way

Boring

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

An almost meditative experience with a sprinkle of humour and poetry thats pulls everything together as an excellent minimalist movie. If you are expecting a conventional narrative with plenty of action, this movie could be perceived as boring or vacuous. However, you will be rewarded if you go with the flow of the beautiful cinematography and pacing that helps to explore some interesting philosophical ideas in a visual way. Jarmusch uses repetitive imagery to create a sense of how the main character maintains balance and stability on his unpredictable journey through Spanish landscapes, mysterious strangers and art galleries. The slow and calm pace of the film allows the viewer to experience the main characters discipline, deep focus and intuition. Some great experimental filmmaking here.

I'm not going to waste anyone's time with subjective yammering, whether it be positive ("a cinematic tour de force!") or negative ("pretentious artsy fluff!") because, let's face it, those comments don't mean squat to anyone but the person saying it.Instead, just rifle through this list of movies and if you liked any of them, you'll probably like this movie."Tetro" (director Francis Ford Coppola, 2009), "Broken Flowers" (director Jim Jarmusch, 2005), "Before It Had a Name" (director Giada Colagrande, 2005), "A Scene at the Sea" (director Takeshi Kitano, 1991), "Der Himmel über Berlin" a.k.a. "Wings of Desire" (director Wim Wenders, 1987), "Paris, Texas" (director Wim Wenders, 1984).If you haven't heard of, or seen, any of those then just bear in mind that "Limits of Control", like the movies mentioned above, is very slow, almost uneventful, without a lot of revealing dialogue to carry the story. These stories are told in images, and it can be a real challenge keeping up, not because there are a lot of crazy twists and turns, but because there's almost nothing. I could sum up the plot of this movie in 8 words: "a day in the life of a hit-man". But if you're up for a challenge, give it a shot.

Yes, this film is slow, maybe even painfully stagnant due to long scenes and shots of mundane activates. Yes, it does not have much of a plot. Yes, the dialogue is scarce. However, these should not be reasons to not see a movie. A film can still achieve a lot without a fast plot or lots of chatting. What makes a movie really unwatchable is if it is thoroughly uninteresting, which is what Limits of Control is doubtlessly guilty of being.From the first scene, where two men speak to each other through a translator who does not understand the conversation, Limits of Control hails itself as postmodern with the line "Reality is subjective…Reality is arbitrary," From there, the film simply proceeds to tick off a list of stereotypical postmodern themes: subjectivity of reality/human experience, an inability to communicate with others, feeling isolated from the rest of humanity, a plot that refuses to make itself logical to its audience, etc. It even chooses fill most of the movie's runtime with the most boring moments possible: endless minutes of sitting, watching, stretching, and walking. This is a stereotypical postmodern blending of fiction and reality, art that imitates real life. After all, those boring moments are what we, as the audience, fill our days with. As the film continues, the plot repeats over and over the ideas presented in the first half hour, contributing nothing new, even up to the film's conclusion.Ultimately, Limits of Control presents no new interpretations of postmodern ideas. It is textbook, operating off of the same concepts Tomas Pynchon had written about fifty years ago. Unlike films like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Limits of Control does not play with its ideas, have fun with them, or stack layers of confusion and meaning. It is too self-obsessed with presenting itself as art.P.S. It might be worth mentioning that the only enjoyable part of the movie was the two-minute cameo by Bill Murray. Too bad it was right at the end.

A lot of comparisons to other films except the one film it is just like! John Sayles Brother From Another Planet (1984). They both even share the same line "how did you get in here"! If you love Limits definitely see Brother. Brother is more a comedy genera told as a fish out of water story where as Limits of Control is more a psychological spy thriller genera told like a fish put back into water after it saw the whole truth of it's environment! Where Limits plays at the audiences lack of knowledge, Brother puts you in a sci-fi vehicle and uses your expectations to create an atmosphere of constant humorous situations based on the audience knowing more than the characters in the film. Limits of Control explores how to reach the mind through art, Brother From Another Planet seems more a metaphor for a culture leaving a mark in a new world and the shaping of Harlem into a place where free men could voice their opinions one day.