Jim Jarmusch's best movies prove he has always been a risk-taker of a director, even if those risks are necessarily pronounced or brash compared to other filmmakers. Over more than 30 years in the business, Jarmusch has dominated the indie scene as a director concerned with the quotidian, the existential, the unusual, the confrontational, the bland, and everything in between. A typical Jarmusch plot presents as a logical, mild-mannered affair no matter how extraordinary the circumstances, choosing to focus on how the characters populating the film operate within the established rules of the world.

As such, Jarmusch has emerged as a director who has been able to go from genre to genre, be it a crime thriller, comedy, or supernatural drama, infusing it with his unique sensibilities. With 13 feature films and two documentaries to his name (not to mention the large handful of short films), Jarmusch has crafted an astounding body of work since his first movie, Permanent Vacation, arrived on the scene at the beginning of the 1980s.

15 Permanent Vacation (1980)

A Young Hipster Wanders Manhattan Seeking The Meaning Of Life

It's not that Jarmusch's first film, 1980s Permanent Vacation, is bad. It's just that Permanent Vacation is the result of a director with a vision attempting to navigate the demands of shooting a feature-length film for the first time. Made on a shoestring budget of $12,000, it is 75 minutes long, shot on 16mm, and stars an unknown actor, Chris Parker. Permanent Vacation is an indie film in every sense of the word.

There's no value in the pondering or listless pace, but it actively believes it's achieving its goals.

It has an aimless plot — a young man wandering around New York City searching for answers about the meaning of life — that doesn't work. There's no value in the pondering or listless pace, but it actively believes it's achieving its goals. However, where Permanent Vacation fails aesthetically and thematically, Jarmusch returned to these bases in future films to unpack it further and achieve a higher degree of success.

14 Year of the Horse (1997)

A Documentary About Neil Young And Crazy Horse

An early documentary venture for Jarmusch was 1997's Year of the Horse. Jarmusch's documentation of Neil Young and Crazy Horse's 1996 tour comes complete with archival footage from the 1970s and 1980s, plus in-depth interviews with the band . But where Jarmusch's attention to and appreciation for Young's music is felt in the attention to the depiction of its subject, Year of the Horse still feels like a rote, by-the-numbers documentary.

A separate live album with the same name was also released, but the track listing differs. Critics were not as impressed, giving the documentary a 48% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Most critics said it is only necessary viewing for hardcore fans of Neil Young or Jim Jarmusch. For mainstream music fans or those Jarmusch fans not as interested in Neil Young, critics claimed it might "test the patience' of viewers.

13 Gimme Danger (2016)

A Documentary About The Rise & Fall Of The Stooges

Gimme Danger focuses on the rise and fall of the 1960s punk band The Stooges. Jim Jarmusch has always been a director interested in music, either incorporating musicians into his films, leaving his imprint on a soundtrack, or, in the case of Gimme Danger, taking a break from fictional storytelling to explore the truth of something that happened.

The subject matter of Gimme Danger may be interesting and intriguing to shine a light on in the present day, but there's barely a whiff of Jarmusch's touches on this documentary, as if he's taking the standard route towards crafting a documentary without any of the auteur touches he's become known for by 2016. However, when Amazon released Gimme Danger on Prime Video, critics loved it, awarding the film a 95% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The main point of interest was that Jarmusch smartly focused on Iggy Pop and his art and wasn't as interested in the band's antics.

12 The Limits of Control (2013)

An Assassin Wanders Spain Awaiting His Instructions

Jarmusch is well into his 30-year career when he brings 2013's The Limits of Control to the masses. In the film, a solitary gun-for-hire waits in Madrid for further instructions on a job. The film is opaque in the most alienating way, switching from the man's time spent in cafes, drinking espresso, and toying with matchboxes to moving about the city and surrounding countryside on a job.

The Limits of Control tries to meld populist plot devices (a quieter side of the criminal underworld with pulp coming out of its ears) and characters with more interior and contemplative actions (criminals with hearts of gold, looking for connection and meaning in their work). Critics were unimpressed, rating the movie at a low 42%, calling its pace slow and its dialogue inaccessible. This also wastes an otherwise stellar lineup of actors — including Issach de Bankole, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, John Hurt, Gael García Bernal, and Paz de la Huer — all immersed in their roles.

11 Night On Earth (1991)

International Cab Drivers Connect With Their Fares

Throughout Jarmusch's career, he's long been a fan of the vignette structure, and he's created a handful of films with this structure, allowing for big casts to come together in a variety of stories all bound by a common thread. 1991's Night on Earth brings together Winona Ryder, Gena Rowlands, Giancarlo Esposito, Rosie Perez, and Roberto Benigni (one of Jarmusch's most frequent collaborators) to play a series of international cab drivers and their fares, all connecting throughout their short time together.

Jarmusch does what he often does best: bring together a set of eclectic characters and train the camera on them as the personalities collide.

However, the claustrophobic nature of setting most of each vignette within a cab and filling it with combustible encounters creates an intriguing watch. The locations spread out between Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki also present a nice variety of personalities.

10 Mystery Train (1989)

Several Strangers Show Up In Memphis To Honor Elvis Presley

Mystery Train begins Jarmusch's appreciation of the vignette-as-anthology format, which has popped up throughout his career. However, where future installments in this format become sprawling, Jarmusch is laser-focused in Mystery Train, bringing together three stories set in Memphis with characters bound by their tenancy in the same hotel and love of Elvis Presley.

One story follows two Japanese teenagers who love Elvis and wander around the city hoping to retrace his steps; another follows an Italian widow who makes an unexpected friend and encounters Presley's ghost. The final story follows an Englishman hiding out in Memphis' dive bars as he waits out the trouble from a robbery gone bad. Jarmusch makes the disparate and divided feel connected and coherent, filtering his love of Americana and mid-century nostalgia through three sets of international eyes, all to a curiously stirring effect.

9 Coffee And Cigarettes (2003)

The most accessible of Jarmusch's vignette films is Coffee and Cigarettes, bringing together in glorious black and white Alfred Molina, Steve Coogan, Cate Blanchett, Iggy Pop, rappers GZA and RZA, and frequent Jarmusch collaborators Tom Waits, Roberto Benigni and Bill Murray. Jarmusch turns three previous short films — 1986's Coffee and Cigarettes, 1989's Coffee and Cigarettes II, and 1993's Coffee and Cigarettes III — into a feature-length film focusing on pairings or groups of characters all communing over a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

The most lighthearted of the anthology films and the easiest to unpack, each vignette offers small character studies and big existential questions — the preferred territories of Jarmusch. It remains an esoteric work but one of the most accessible, making it a perfect Jarmusch work for newcomers to his world. The movie received mixed reviews, but even the detractors praised the quirky and engaging dialogue.

8 Dead Man (1995)

A Murderer Is Sent On A Spiritual Journey In The Great Plains

Dead Man is a notable moment in Jarmusch's career, serving as the first of many roles in a young Johnny Depp's career where he tries to break the mold of late '80s teen heartthrob and plant himself inside odd, goth, contemplative characters. Dead Man follows Depp's William Blake, a mild-mannered ant sent across the American Great Plains on a vision quest after murdering a man. Depp's performance is memorable, establishing him as the '90s and '00s character he is poised to become at the time of this film.

Jarmusch utilizes Depp's atypical instincts in performance well, setting them against the spiritual, mystical elements of a story in which a man is compelled to complete a quest by a Native American spirit. Sure, Jarmusch toes the line of problematically deploying tired tropes around magical minorities, only appearing to serve white characters. Still, he manages to thread his narrative needle while not diving too far into that touchy territory.

7 Stranger Than Paradise (1984)

Two Cousins With Different Cultural Upbringings Attempt To Connect

Jarmusch's second film, 1984's Stranger Than Paradise, contains the seeds of what would become a familiar narrative ground for the director: examining the cultural clashes of the international with the American through potentially uncomfortable but often amusing circumstances. In Stranger Than Paradise, a New York hipster is unexpectedly visited by his cousin from Budapest. The two are wary, if not somewhat hostile, towards one another during their initial moments together but eventually find common ground as they are taken across the city, encountering unusual folks along the way.

The film was a thesis statement for Jarmusch, confirming that he was a director interested in trying to translate the interior to the exterior. It melded the more philosophical aspects of life with characters who were just as caught between the world and their own minds and picked through the small absurdities and mysteries of their daily lives.

6 Down By Law (1986)

Three Men Break Out Of Jail In The Lousiana Bayou

Starring Benigni, Waits, and John Lurie, Down By Law is another ode to Elvis Presley while also using Presley's film Jailhouse Rock as a kind of foundation for this jailbreak movie. Benigni, Waits, and Lurie's characters are three criminals who manage to escape from the confines of their jail cells, going on the lam and trying their hardest not to get caught. Jarmusch's affection for character studies over action-driven narrative comes in big time here, looking at how these three characters' personalities attract and repel one another in the high-stakes nature of a jailbreak.

The film is notable for its intense, slow-moving camerawork by cinematographer Robby Mueller. This meticulous filmmaking allows the Louisiana Bayou to almost become a character in the film. Critics praised the movie for its humor and original story, with the three characters' performances leading what was deemed to be a poetic fable in the world of film noir.