kaustavthegodfather There are few cinemas which deal with the obsession of cinema and cinema halls and yet showing the decaying of cinematic culture as new technology has wiped the projector based 'Run-of-the-mill cinema halls. Goodbye, Dragon Inn is a cinema which stands for the urban alienation of people, the decaying culture of cinema and also showing in an uncanny style of cinematography the audience in this case most of them are homosexuals or people seeking sexual companionship. Goodbye dragon inn is stripped of bare essentials such as emotions, jazzy editing and any sort of background music. There is no plot except for a cinema hall showing a martial arts movie in a rainy day over Taiwan. The event of cinema takes place over 2 - 3 hours and has unnamed characters. One lady ticket collector who with a limp manages the theater but is not the owner. Tsai in a unique and subtle way shows the audience during the course of the movie where there is hardly a few people. One of them seeking to brush with other men in the cinema hall and is somewhat repulsed by women or their gross antiques of chewing food in a noisily fashion in the theater. But the whole film has so much more and is in the least entertaining. This cinema is what one would call life reflecting art. This is a cinema made for people reflecting the future in a mysterious way where decadence has made a lot of cinema halls go out of business. Everyone talks of nostalgia but there is none when it comes to reviving old cinema in the halls. It makes us wonder if a martial arts movie cannot drag a handful audience in a rainy day, can a n obscure or lesser known cinema do any better in a normal day. Tsai also takes a swoop on the people who go their for their vested interests. Surprisingly most of them are homosexuals.A very slow pacing cinema which has a few scenes and done in a extremely minimalist fashion unflattering it in the same instance. Though it has long shot of an empty cinema hall for a few minutes which baffled me. But it made me wonder, does the director wants to show the emptiness of it ? This is one of the best films which I have seen which deals with cinema. Cinema is dead, Long Live Cinema.

JillieKate It was tedious beyond words. I was looking forward to a pleasant evening. I made popcorn. I turned down the lights. I waited and waited and waited. Absolutely nothing happened. What a waste of time and money. I gave it 40 minutes then I got up and did housework.I found that far more exciting. The director should be ashamed of boring people to death. This movie belongs in a dustbin. I was hoping for an Asian cinema Paridiso. Ha ha What a fool I was, well fool me once,but never again. This director has had it with me.The blurb on the box was so promising. Compare this movie to the stupendous house of the flying daggers. The rental price was the same,but thats it, and to think it was classified as an action martial arts movie I could weep with the disappointment.

boardbryce I can certainly understand others comments about this film being dull and uninteresting. However, I find it refreshing that a director has taken the risk in creating a film as neutral as this. At a glance, the plot is extremely simple. But I find each of the characters to be intriguing as they each have so many tells. I also enjoyed the parallels between the film in progress and the interaction between viewers in the theater. All sense of emotion has been left at the door in the creation of this film, and the soundtrack is barely existent. The photography was phenomenal, and the transitions between scenes were fantastic. I suggest you not think of this as a movie at all, but rather a work of art.

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.