This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
I didn't love it. The set up was much more artful and interesting than the payoff. I would have preferred seeing these characters in this setting minus the From Dusk Till Dawn stuff at the end. I understand the metaphors at play here, but "it's a metaphor" is never an acceptable excuse for bad storytelling.
Taking off an extra half-star for the bloated run time.
Perfectly enjoyable late-career portrayal of Wong Fei Hung by the veteran Kwan Tak-hing. There's nothing here that it will blow your mind, but it's fun.
The commentary by Frank Djeng is worth the purchase of the Blu-ray from Eureka, and is probably more rewarding than the film itself.
There's another commentary track by Mike leader and Arnie Venema that is not rewarding. Those two rarely have more to offer than noting when there's obvious stunt doubling, at or chuckling at cultural peculiarities or temporal anomalies, like when they spot extras wearing street clothes instead of period costumes.
One of my favorite movies. Despite the acidic satire going on, Ghost World is so real on an emotional level that by the last quarter of the film it starts hurting me to watch it. I can relate to just about every character- how they are all dealing with their failure to connect with others and find meaning in their lives. The realness also stems from the fact that these aren't very good people- like most of the rest of…
Sometimes you watch a movie and you know it isn’t “good,” but you are deeply affected by it nonetheless. It helps that I love Kat Dennings. She carries this whole movie, which would have been a wreck without her. I wish I had seen this when I was 14, it would have kicked my ass.
