UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

GialloUncharted Warning: A lot of spoilers. I explain here the whole plot of the movie. Nothing happens. No one talks. 200 minutes.Great reviews, though. The part about great reviews is what impresses me most about this. 100 out of 100. Masterpiece.Yeah, sure.

flora_li_2000 Most of the time when we go to see a movie, what we look for is to be entertained. So by definition those movies are entertainment. The people who make those movies, even though they call themselves artists, are actually entertainers. We look for self recognition, relaxation, amusement,... Yes, entertainment. We are used to being fed plots and emotion quickly. But some movies are actually art, and the movie makers, are truly artists. They do not entertain, they educate. They do not entertain, they inspire. They do not entertain, they lead. This is one of those movies, it is basically about desperate poor and unimportant people's life under microscope. Not an unusual story but It is told in a very distinctive and unconventional way. The director once said, why does a movie have to to have a story with beginning, peak and ending? Why does a scene have to have something happen? Weird, right? Yet if we open ourselves to the possibility that there is not a fixed way to make a movie, we may be returned to the original stage of our senses, while we were much softer and sensitive as we Do not have a box in our head. There are A lot of long takes. Some I like, some I do not, the funny thing is, when I am determined to be open and not anxiously waiting for some big movement in the scene, I find those long takes sometimes not long enough. Because I now feel the emotion of the character and my emotion flows with the scene, but the take cut short before I can switch. This is really a brand new experience. I won't talk about the splendid performance and the black humor in the move, if you are patient and open you will find them yourselves, as long as you are the kind of audience who enjoy art, in addition to entertainment.

Sergeant_Tibbs My first Tsai Ming Liang film was his fifty minute odyssey of a monk moving very slowly through Journey To The West. I unexpectedly loved it, so I was ready for any challenges he had for me in his second film of the year Stray Dogs. Yes, it has an abundance of slowly paced and ethereal shots, but here he had a loose narrative. It's all about the anguish of living on the fringe and the film perfectly evokes that emotion as characters silently battle the elements. There's not a shot quite like the scene where its lead sings tearfully while holding up a sign. However, the film lacks an essential economy to make it worth all its 138 minutes, even if it is beautifully shot for the most part. It needed more time in the editing room, and more time in the writers room at that. There's not enough layers to the characters and story to make it completely satisfying, besides potential political meanings that flew over my head. Its best when its eliciting a devastating trapped sensation with an eternal cycle offering no escape.7/10

Suvrangshu Sarkar Being a student of film, heard a lot about Tsai ming Liyang in my institute. Actually heard many good reviews about his other film 'The Whole'. Then I went to see the movie 'Stray Dogs' at the Kolkata International Film Festival 2013. And believe me, it gave me pain.Now if you consider the last sentence of the above paragraph as a positive one, then you would be wrong. The story of a deceased family, who find it difficult to manage their daily living food is said in such a way, at a point it seemed boring.There are obviously master touch in showing the feeling of the father.specially with the cabbage sequence, it seemed as a melancholic poetry.But then, what happened to the family, were they in distress from the very beginning, is not very clear. Mainly the background of the characters is the thing that lacks in the film.That's why the credibility of the characters comes to question sometimes.And then comes the length of the shots.Wallah....Had this film been shot in 35 mm film, I don't know whether this structure of film could have been achieved or not. Only because someone has the benefit of digital film making, that doesn't give anyone the liberty to test the patience of the audience I reckon. (Spoiler) I don't know whether it would be a spoiler or not, but I have to say, the last two shots of the films are so long, that it seemed at a point, that this film is never ending. Even with this structure, this film could have been 25-30 minutes shorter.At the end I can only say, a very good prospect and possibility of telling a good story has been lost, with some rare touchy treatments..