Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Martin Bradley A tone poem on the nature of cinema as an entity, an art-form and a place, Ming-Liang Tsai's "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" is unlike almost any other film you will see. To say it will appeal mostly to people who love cinema may not necessarily be true for here is a film that challenges what many people believe cinema should be; entertainment perhaps, something communal and if we view it as a means of expression surely that expression should be more universal than what we get here and yet for many of us, "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" will strike us as being intensely personal. For many, this is a film that will stir up what drew us to cinema in the first place.It's almost totally silent, reminding us that in its infancy cinema was silent. We hear snatches of dialogue from the film within the film, (the martial arts classic "Dragon Inn"), that is being shown in the cinema where almost all of 'the action' takes place but there are no sub-titles. There are only a handful of characters in this cavernous auditorium but they don't communicate. If there is any unification between these people it's through the medium of cinema. There is the lame woman who acts as ticket collector and cleaner, the projectionist, an elderly man and his grandson and a number of gay men who cruise the cinema for sex, (though far from explicit these scenes have a remarkable homo-erotic charge making this an essential gay film), and perhaps a ghost.You could say, of course, that few of these people are there to see the film but were Duane and Sonny there to watch "Red River" in "The Last Picture Show" or was it just a ritual that has to be adhered to as part of a larger scheme, (in their case, growing up; here staving off loneliness). It's also a film about looking; seeing this in a cinema not unlike the one on screen we become part of the experience and it is clear from the extracts from "Dragon Inn" that Ming-Liang Tsai is very much in love with movies.Nothing really happens and the film moves at a snail's pace yet this is the least boring of art-house movies; it's an immersive experience and whether you see it alone or with others, if you have any feeling for cinema at all, you can't fail but to be touched by it though I suspect, for many, it will be like watching paint dry.

Jamie Ward Somewhere in the world, in some run down town, you can bet there's a cinema that's on its final reel, not just of the night, but of its existence. It's a sad fact of life that everything must come to an end at some point, and one that cinema itself has taken upon itself to dwell within too many times. Yet when taken into the context of film and the cinema-going experience itself, very little has been discussed or expressed up on the big screen in regards. In what is undoubtedly one of the most original experiences you'll never have in a theatre (but rather on your TV set, because nowhere will play this ever again, at least this side of the Pacific), Goodbye Dragon Inn is a somber and reflective piece of film that takes its ever-sweet time at documenting the final breaths of a small neglected film-house somewhere in China through long, documentive shots that linger on long after the projector dims. Filmed on location at a cinema that would, ironically, close its doors less than a year later, Ming-liang Tsai delivers a piece of art that mimics life which in turn mimics art—it's daring, and it's bold, in just about all the least daring and bold ways imaginable.Set over the course of eighty minutes whilst classic Kung-Fu action flick Dragon Inn plays out its final screening, Goodbye Dragon Inn serves as something of an elegy or funeral for the dying experience that is going to see a movie. Make no mistake, Ming-liang Tsai doesn't coat anything here in obtuse shades of rose-tinted romance, nor does he make light of the spectacle either. Instead, the director manages to fuse the movie's distinctly reflective mood with that of humour and little minute observations that many cinephiles will be sure to get a kick out of. Indeed, amongst some of the film's most endearing moments is a simple sequence which sees one member of the audience trapped in between a pair of feet over the headrest next to him, and a weird guy obviously trying to make a pass; and this is after moving away from two obnoxious face- stuffers. Even in a half-dead cinema, it would seem, you can't escape its inevitable drawbacks.Even with these brief moments of humour however, the vast majority of the movie remains static and elongated to the point where much sense of reality is lost. Again echoing the experience of going to see a movie and getting lost in the un-reality of that glow coming at you from the surrounding darkness, Ming-liang Tsai embodies his subject matter with a thorough sense of commitment. Characters, rather than feature as living, breathing, a-list stars and personas, come across more as b-lister background characters—neglected to speaking only forty minutes into the feature, and then even after that, speaking just a few more some twenty minutes later. Scenes, which can sometimes last for minutes on end with next to no movement on the screen whatsoever, drag time and yet manage to keep you there, watching and waiting to see what magic perhaps lies somewhere in that mysterious room. Putting a sharp restraint on dialogue and plot or action, the director forces the viewer to move at his pace, which is a slow burning funeral march—mournful yet charming at the same time.No matter how you approach Ming-liang Tsai's work here however, there remains an unmitigated feeling that what you do experience over the course of these eighty minutes is something special. Not just in what it says, or how it says it, but in how Goodbye Dragon Inn manages to take these otherwise off-putting and easily disgruntling methods of minimalist film-making and in turn fashion them into something really quite captivating and unique; the methodology is simple, yet the results are not. Striking a firm balance between art-house and sentimental naval-gazing upon the medium in which it itself exists, Goodbye Dragon Inn is an original and thought-provoking piece of cinema that signals the final curtain call of a cinematic era with a humble and resolute grin of affection.

Michael Field Nothing happens in this movie. Well, almost nothing. You get to watch three guys urinate for a few minutes. That's about as exciting as it gets. That's not all though; no. You get to watch a cripple walk slowly for about a fifth of the film. She trudges up stairs and through hallways tragically and with singular non-purposefulness. You get to watch people watching people watch movies. The movies they watch are better than watching them watch the movies. Skip watching this film and watch the movies that the people in the film are watching instead. Those at least look somewhat entertaining. I would recommend this movie to anyone who wants to shoot themselves in the head.

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.