Goodbye Dragon Inn

In a cavernous movie palace, King Hu's classic 1968 film Dragon Inn plays for a sparse crowd. As the movie progresses, the ticket-taker makes dinner, cleans the bathroom, and checks in on the projectionist. Audience members wander in and out, occasionally interacting in the restroom or the vast hallways that surround the theater proper. Minimally plotted, Tsai Ming-Liang's film is a poetic, dryly humorous portrait of a place and its denizens, and an homage to a director who influenced his career. ~ Tom Vick