Beanbioca
As Good As It Gets
Deanna
There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
Isbel
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
writers_reign
Definitely not for the Multiplex crowd this is a slow-burner with Chekhovian undertones, gorgeous photography and lots of understated acting. It's a simple enough premise: we're in the immediate post-war period in a quiet Chinese backwater where a man who looks several years older than the mid-thirties to which he admits, possibly because of a medical condition, lives in sexless tranquility with his wife and sister. This can't go on of course otherwise we're talking Walden in Mandarin so enter the man's old friend down from Shanghai for an unspecified period, add in the fact that the friend and the wife were once an item, stir gently and allow to simmer. That's just about it but as I keep on saying it's all in the wrist.
Hunky Stud
I rated Basic instinct 2 high, yet that movie got less than a 4 rating. This film only got a 4 from me, but it has 7.3 from over 600 people. I don't see a reason why they like this film so much.This film is boring, because it hardly ever leaves those rooms in that broken big house. And it only has a total of 5 people in this film. It is almost two hours long which is totally unnecessary. Many of dialogues are slow and meaningless. The film tone is also dark blue which is depressing to watch. The film can just be shorten to a few sentences.This film reminds me of "Three times" directed by Hou Hsiao hsien, that one is equally boring, the dialogues are also equally boring. It also has a high rating! I had to stop watching that one after the first story finished.This film lacks of passion or excitement.
federovsky
This film is so painfully slow I could only take it in 20 minute bites over the course of a week or so. There is so much wrong with it I don't know where to begin.The main thing, I think, is the married woman, who is required to comport herself throughout the film with such preternatural stiffness and sparseness of movement that her character quickly becomes fairly detestable. I began to dread her appearance, knowing that I would have to spend a full minute watching her turn her head a few degrees.In fact, the director's main device was to turn all three main characters into zombies to reflect their inability to act decisively - a fairly facile technique that soon became irksome and led the film into an endless and repetitive dramatic bog, from which the limited acting talent on display was not able to lift it. It was all a very poor imitation of Chekhov.The only scrap of interest I got from the film was the reflection that given the historical context of China at that time, the characters, with nothing better to do than degenerate into effete self-indulgence, were already virtually walking ghosts. No doubt historical events soon put them out of their misery. And not a moment too soon.
alexduffy2000
"Springtime in a Small Town" is beautiful to look at, but not very memorable. It's basically a filmed play taking place in a house, there are a few exterior shots but not many. I was involved for the first 30 minutes, but then I stopped caring, the plot just wasn't interesting enough. Basically, it's a romantic triangle between the homeowner, his wife, and a visiting doctor friend. Because this film is so dependent on dialogue, I was hoping for some heady conversations on China's crumbling situation - the film takes place in 1948 - but it never happens. The film is like a beautiful model on a runway, pretty to look at, but lacking any depth.
