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$9.99 Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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Goodbye Dragon Inn
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MPAA RATING: Not Rated
Starring Lee Kang-Sheng, Chen Shiang-Chyi, Mitamura Kiyonobu, Miao Tien, Shih Chun, Yang Kuei-mei, Chen Chao-Jung, and Lee Yi-Cheng
On the last night before the old movie theater is shut down, a Japanese youth, despite the hard rain, comes running into the theater. The theater seems empty, void of life; yet there are some people, and some may not be people... (Wellspring Media)
| GENRE(S): | Comedy | Drama | Foreign |
| WRITTEN BY: | Tsai Ming-liang |
| DIRECTED BY: | Tsai Ming-liang |
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: February 15, 2005 Video: February 15, 2005 Theatrical: September 17, 2004 |
| RUNNING TIME: | 81 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: | Taiwan |
| LANGUAGE(S): | Mandarin (with English subtitles) |
Original title "Bu san"
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The average user rating for this movie is 5.3 (out of 10) based on 11 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Matt J gave it a0:
Total crap.
Panda gave it a0:
This movie makes no sense, there were a few funny moments but a complete waste of time nonetheless. Who stands in front of the urinal for 15 minutes and makes people watch that crap?
Brandon P. gave it a0:
This is not a film about the end of movies. This is the end of movies. This is a film where the director stops caring about his audience, in place of lazy pretentiousness. This is a case of a writer so confidant that critics will read deeply into his film that he creates no actual meaning at all. This is the case of editors giving up on appropriate timing and rhythm so much so that it creates a visual representation of nails on a chalkboard. And if you really think a limping woman walking up stairs for an extended period of time is that funny, than you have a very dull sense of humor. Hollywood’s films may have become stale, but we should not react to it by giving praise to this kind of crap. Finally, the inside of a movie theater is the single least interesting location for an audience to watch while sitting in a movie theater. I love film, I love independent film and I love foreign film, but this is the single worst movie I have ever seen. I am almost offended that this was made at all.
Chad S. gave it an8:
It's an amusing gambit to make a movie about going to the movies when the film-within-the film is going to be of more interest to the average moviegoer...in Taiwan. An international festival audience, however, sits in admiration at how Taiwanese cinema has matured since their pop-entertainment days of martial arts epic, without understanding that those days were halcyon. I suspect that Tsai Ming-liang's films are more popular abroad, as are the filmographies of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang. Late in the film, two old men commiserate over how people don't attend the movies anymore, and "Goodbye Dragon Inn" is just the sort of film to keep them away. This film could be construed as a self-criticism of a formalist director's failure to enrich his own people's lives with stories they can relate to. It was the author Sherman Alexie who made me first aware that the high-end of non-white artists are not popular with their own people. Alexie, a Native-American, had said that "all of his ancestors were illiterate," and that his fanbase are largely white, middle-class women. The key to getting anything out of "Goodbye Dragon Inn" is to project yourself as one of the film's patrons. Don't be you, be them.
moses l. gave it a9:
One of the best of 2004, a tribute to the end of cinema and movie going before film became digital, and images on the screen and sounds behind the projector are essences of another time.
Clint H. gave it a10:
Beautiful and haunting.
Damon C gave it a9:
This film, slow as it may be, is hilarious in many parts. There are just so many unexpected moments, satirically observed, analogous to how a murderer would stalk his prey, but in an arch B movie way. On the other hand, every characters is so real that there is a documentary feel to it - but of course, the very deliberateness of the framing and the stillness subvert that reading. Ultimately, the cumulative effect is one of longing, for something lost, for something never to be found alive again. It is a beautiful tribute to the past heroes of cinema, who are now merely ghosts slowly fading into celluloid.
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