Millennium Mambo
Millennium Mambo Image
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Metascore
73 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 12 Critics What's this?

User Score
4.7 out of 10

Mixed or average reviews- based on 7 Ratings

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0 out of 10
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  • Summary: Set in Taipei, this is the story of a young woman trapped in several bad relationships.

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 12
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 12
  3. Negative: 0 out of 12
  1. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: G. Allen Johnson
    100
    Cause for celebration. It's not only a cracking good film, but it is the first by Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien to gain a national (though limited) release.
  2. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    80
    Millennium Mambo is a resolutely minor work, so enveloped in ennui that it never gets past the surface of things. But those surfaces are remarkable.
  3. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: John Powers
    80
    Jean-Luc Godard famously declared that all it takes to make a movie is a girl and a gun. Both turn up in Millennium Mambo, a ravishing bauble about la dolce vita in Taiwan, but frankly, the gun's an afterthought. This is a movie about the girl.
  4. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    60
    In a sense, Millennium Mambo is a mildly prurient portrait of Shu moving, drinking, smoking, and changing clothes -- it's analogous to one of Andy Warhol's Edie Sedgwick films, but without the existential drama. Who really cares what costume this poor girl will wear to all tomorrow's parties?

See all 12 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 2
  3. Negative: 2 out of 2
  1. JoshC
    0
    One of the worst films of the decade. It makes "Jackass" look like a work of art.
  2. JonR.
    0
    I'll have to see it again, but my first two looks at Hou Hsiao-hsien's latest feature, initially announced as the first in a new series, have led me to conclude that it's one of the emptiest good-looking films by a major director that I can recall--even though it's also the first of his films to get a U.S. release (unless one counts the 1987 Daughter of the Nile, which was barely noticed). The characters are boring--terminally familiar zeros--and the ability of this Taiwanese master to be a provocative and prescient historian of the present (Goodbye South, Goodbye and portions of Good Men, Good Women) appears to have deserted him. Visually, he works much closer to his actors than usual and moves his characters in and out of focus, defining a much more claustrophobic world than he has in the past. But the story--a young bar hostess (Hong Kong star Shu Qi) shuttles between her jealous boyfriend/flatmate and a gangster while taking ecstasy and throwing tantrums--seems standard issue, apart from the somewhat unorthodox voice-over narration, at least until an unexpectedly lyrical finale… Expand

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