Nice effects though.

A Disappointing Continuation

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Oh! I can't believe you people out there actually gave this movie any value. I am simply not that kind of person who can dig deep thoughts out of a bunch of crap, who can stare a guy in this movie peeing for 5 minutes without being p***ed off. I watch movie for fun and didn't enjoy at all watching unchanged scenes, empty stairs, stonefaced actors eating, s****ing and sleeping for 115 minutes. Not to mention when the son coincidentally had sex with his dad, i was just completely freaked out. You can name this movie realism or what. But to me that's hardly the reality and completely unacceptable and pervert. I strongly recommend you not to waste the 115 minutes, even though it probably won't be 115 because you will fast forward most of the movie just like me.

There are many who say Marcel Duchamp was the greatest influence in 20th century art, but for better or worse is hotly debated. One can put a commode on a dais in an art gallery and there will be those wearing berets and smoking French cigarettes who will examine it closely as they discuss in hushed and reverent tones the significance of the fact that anyone seated on it would be facing north, or whatever point of the compass a user would happen to be facing. Then there would be others, among whom I would be one, who would look at it and say, "OK. It's a toilet. So what?"Whether you considers Ming-liang Tsai's "The River" a work of cinematic genius exploring the soulessness of modern existence in an urban landscape (see most of the previous comments), or an uncommonly tedious exercise in pointing out the obvious by a self-indulgent director (yes, that's my opinion) is obviously a matter of taste. Personally, I don't need to pay money and walk into a theater to sit through two hours of some Asiatic form of Dogme 95 film-making to know that spiritual ennui is the price extracted for living in today's industrialized world. I can get on the subway where I live and see it all around me, also in real time, and with much better lighting.With very little dialogue, "The River" relies almost exclusively on cinematic technique, often involving images in reflective surfaces to indicate (insert metaphorical reference of your choice here). The film does have the virtue of being made up of extremely well-composed shots, and if viewed strictly from a photographic standpoint, it does have some artistic merit. But on the whole, I find little to recommend this film. There are far better movies out there to be seen. Rating: 3/10.

The action of this film is so slow that I couldn't help being disturbed by the popcorn muncher behind me two rows back. It was such an existential experience, I found myself reasoning the sounds behind me were no less banal than the ones on the screen and it would do no good to complain.This is a film that the missing time between scenes plays as much a part of the film as what is on the screen.Like a meditative fragment from the presocratic philosophers "the River" is an assemblage of 24 sequential still images replayed to create the illusion of motion and Tsai takes each long, drawn out sequential scene and removes so much in between to maintain fluidity the audience is forced to fill in the gaps to complete the story.Like Ingmar Bergman's "Cries and Whispers" disease is a metaphor creeping its way into the lives of a pool of people. But Tsai, has removed the beautiful image, and the mysticism. He hammers a cold story directly into the psyche. Emphasizing fleeting connections between the disconnected, "the River" is more than the filthy river that may or may not be the source of the main characters problem but a degraded class of people without hope of understanding what's happening to them.Be prepared for a devastating and harsh illustration of gender confusion and environmental disaster.

While most of Chinese/Taiwanese film directors spend their effort on the past legend,Tsai focuses on the present city life scene.It's always an unhappy challenge to deal with Reality and it needs a lots of guts.And Tsai does it faithfully. The father and son's love/hate complex is not a surprise in the asian society.This is more than a homosexual movie. While Lee An is trying too hard for the happy ending, Tsai is more interested in individual identity that has long been a fatal conflict in most asian families.