BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Seamus2829 The closing of any cinema is for me a sad moment in time. It means that yet, another picture house is closing it's doors,due to one reason or another. This is the subject of this rather sad,but up lifting film by a director from Taiwan. A cinema in Taipai,Taiwan is screening the last film it will ever run, as it's closing the very next day. The series of events makes for the film's plot. The rather sparse,ragtag staff is the last vestiges of the cinema's life blood, as are the patrons (mainly old people,homosexuals looking for a pick-up,film buffs,etc). What gives this film it's irony is the fact that it's screening the 1961 film 'Dragon Inn',as it's final offering. We soon find out that a few of the film's original cast are in the audience,softly crying at the images,knowing that after this night,no one will probably ever screen this film in it's original glory. This film also makes good use of it's minimal pacing,muted photography,and lack of dialog (the first line doesn't appear until well into the first 45 minutes of the film). This is NOT a film for those who insist that a film must have tons of explosions,car chases,bleach blonde busty bimbos,heads being blown off by shotguns & wall to wall f-bombs being hurled every other line of spoken text. It is,however,a fine film for those who choose to rise above the mindless bombast of the Hollywood sausage factory of movie making. No MPAA rating here, but apart from a (potential)gay pick up, not much to offend here.

Dennis Littrell (Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)This the kind of film you see at an art film festival at some inopportune time after you've already watched twenty films. You start watching it and it seems so boring that you know it can't be THAT boring. You're missing something. You sit up and you concentrate. Nothing happens. There is this woman with a club foot. She sways and totters up and down like a boat caught in waves as she drags her foot down a sparsely-lit corridor. The camera is at one end of the corridor and it records her progress. Then after she is gone, the camera holds on the empty corridor for some long seconds, make that literally minutes, and then cuts to another scene.This time the camera is looking out into a darkened movie theater. There are only a couple of people seated in the red seats. Finally some dialogue. It's from the movie being shown, a kind of sword and warlord melodrama set in the Ming Dynasty. (Actually it's King Hu's Dragon Inn (1967), a martial arts epic--hence the name of this movie). The camera watches the face of one particular viewer. He is just sitting there watching the movie. The camera watches him watching the movie. It watches him watching the movie for a long time.At some later point the guy goes to the bathroom. He's actually a Japanese tourist. He stands next to some other guy at a urinal. Another guy comes in and stands at a third urinal. One guy smokes a cigarette. Some time passes. Then there is another scene. The woman with the club foot is in the bathroom. She opens one stall and flushes the toilet. She opens another stall and flushes the toilet. The camera stays on the scene until she has flushed the last toilet, and then holds on the empty bathroom...At this point you figure out what is going on. This is an anti-film. Everything is backwards. The film maker (Tsai Ming-Liang) is not trying to entertain you, to impress you, or to excite you, or rally you to some cause, dazzle you, invoke your tears, uplift you, scare you, redeem you--no, the film maker is doing exactly the opposite of what film normally tries to do.And then there's another scene, as if to confirm your interpretation. The one guy and another stand in the corridor smoking cigarettes. There is after a bit some words from the second man. He says this theater is haunted. There is no response. He says "Ghosts." No response. The camera now gets a little closer so that you see the men from perhaps a few feet away. Their heads are turned away from the camera so that only the back of their heads and a little bit of the sides of their faces can be seen. The camera holds. No one says anything.And finally near the end of the film after the theater has been closed for the night (actually forever, as this is about the death of the movie house), one guy puts his palm on a fortune telling machine. The machine says, "Enter your question." He punches a button. After a bit, the machine says, "Please take your fortune." A pause, and then the machine kicks out the fortune on a strip of paper. The guy takes it and reads it. And then he leaves. The camera does NOT show his fortune.The part you like best comes at the end as a woman sings a Chinese song about "Half was bitter; half was sweet." Her voice is gorgeous and the melody is engaging. And then the title characters run down the screen.Okay, this film really IS boring unless you are a true student of film, and then you can see that this anti-film about people watching a film is a statement about the film-maker's art. As you leave the theater, now having seen twenty-one films, you declare that this was very interesting, and you know you are going to vote this one higher than some of the others because it so deliberately bored you that you were not really bored at all, compared to some other films that took themselves too seriously and really did bore you. "Interesting," you say to your companion. "Really makes a statement," he says. "Beautiful in a way," you say. "Yes," he says.Suddenly you have an angle on the film. You're thinking, "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" somehow reminds you of the lyric from the Elton John song about Marilyn Monroe. The lyric is, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." Same thing, you think--or at least the same melancholy idea.

Jailbreak I am compelled to write a review of this movie that doesn't berate it, since most people seem to expect an action-packed and commercially viable film, not the artful and well done piece that it is. Liang's point is quite clear, and whether "nothing happens" or not is left up to the viewer's interpretation I guess. It's a short feature though, and anyone who is seriously interested in film should check this out. "Nobody goes to the movies anymore." With this line, we are told exactly what Liang is saying to us. The film is an ode to going to the movies. If you don't like going to the movies, then you shouldn't watch this film. If you do, then it should fill you up with the fuel that you need to get you through this piece.

artist_signal Tsai Ming Liang's recent piece "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" (Bu San) is a film chock full of beautiful color and rich, textured moods. It features the characteristic pacing of Taiwanese film, and it is composed of shot upon remarkable shot of a crumbling movie theatre in its final days, playing the last runs of "Dragon Gate Inn", a martial art classic Dir. by King Hu. Some of the stark imagery lingers, and it is just the pure action of the actors (there is no dialogue in the film for the first 45 minutes) that makes the film a profound stylistic achievement. There are some appearances by the original actors of The Dragon Gate Inn film (Tien Miao, for one); and Tsai Ming Liang's favorite actor Lee-Kang Sheng shows up at the end as the film projectionist. There's also a fine performance by Chen Shiang-chyi, who plays the limping "heroine" of the film, if such a thing exists in this movie. A great film overall, and a cinematic work that tries to say a very heartfelt and melancholic "goodbye" to not only "Dragon Gate Inn", but also to the old cultural and historical values that are perhaps beginning to fade in Taiwan.