Three Times
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Movie Reviews of Three Times
Movie Review: once is enough
Summary: 2 Stars
**1/2
Like so many foreign and independent films these days, Hsiao-hsien Hou`s "Three Times" is less concerned with telling a story than with observing the rituals of everyday life. The movie is so-titled because it uses the same set of actors to tell three different tales of love spanning nearly a century of Chinese history.
The first segment, "A Time for Love", set in 1966, is a sweet and tender tale of an arm's-length romance between a pool hall hostess and the soldier who pursues her. The second, "A Time for Youth," in which a singer yearns for a life outside the brothel in which she works, takes place in 1911 and borrows its style from silent films, using title cards rather than voices to convey the dialogue. The final part, "A Time for Freedom," is a contemporary tale of a bisexual woman caught between her male and female lovers.
All three episodes are more mood pieces than narratives, with emotions and meanings hinted at rather than externalized and dramatized. This is fine up to a point, but eventually, as a trilogy, "Three Times" becomes a case of diminishing returns the longer it goes on. The first section is a work of tremendous charm and beauty, the second considerably less so, and the third is so inscrutable in content and desultory in tone that the viewer winds up virtually pulling his hair out in frustration and boredom by the time it`s over. There are some distinct parallels between the first and second story, and I'm sure that one could come up with some grand thematic scheme connecting the three works, but, frankly, none of it really holds together all that well, apart from the use of letters (or, in the case of the third installment, text messages) as a key plot device in each section.
Qi Shu and Chen Chang have charisma and rapport as the two time-hopping lovers, but even they are not enough to keep "Three Times" from being much less than the sum of its parts.
Movie Review: A critic's movie
Summary: 2 Stars
This film is a darling of the critics. Roger Ebert gave it four stars, and A. O. Scott of the NY Times describes it, on the DVD's box, as "a masterpiece," adding, "this is why cinema exists." That being the case, if you are, or aspire to be, a devotee of cinema, then this film may be required viewing. But if your sensibilities run toward (mere) movies, beware.
The film, set in Taiwan and China, depicts three love stories -- set in three historical periods: 1911, 1966, and 2005 -- using the same actor and actress. The problem, simply put, is that "Three Times" moves at a glacial pace and little happens. As one of the few critics not to wax euphoric put it, "if this movie moved any slower it could qualify as a photograph." When each segment ended, and when the final credits rolled, the question plaintively asked by Peggy Lee came to mind: Is that all there is?
Movie Review: anything but a masterpiece
Summary: 2 Stars
I've seen a lot of movies and read a lot of reviews over the years, and I have never before found a movie that was judged so highly by well-known critics to be so poor. There is a fair amount of visual beauty, including that provided by lead actress Shu Qi. But the imagery amd music are repetitive, the camera work is slothful and uninspired, the music is largely trite and cloying, and the sparse dialogue is alternately trite and banal. good love stories show you why and how the people love each other; these show you neither. I am a big fan of foreign films and I often like films that don't follow conventional formulas, and films paced slowly and without a lot of dialogue or action, e.g. The Silence and Cache. But without much dialogue, action, innovation, or substance, what's left is "Three Times".Movie Review: Three Times
Summary: 2 Stars
Although the cinematography was beautiful, I found "Three Times" to be boring. It is a very slow and deliberate movie. Because it essentially consists of only two characters, there's not much of a storyline. And to be perfectly honest, I didn't find either characters to be that well developed or interesting. I suppose the theme would be how difficult it is to connect with people who we love, but did I have to be told that three times??? (Hence the title of the film.) Many people walked out of this movie--especially during the very long second part. I felt like doing it too, but I wanted to get my money's worth. Unfortunately, I didn't. NOT RECOMMENDED.Movie Review: 3 strikes after three times
Summary: 1 Stars
i've decided not to view any film from this director again. it seems to me this director and some other well-known chinese directors are all totally LOST and didn't know what they're doing. they all preferred cinematography to the integrity and solidness of a good story. all they did were putting exaggeration and pretentiousness into their movies, throwing away the simplicity and directness of a storyline that should be the main concern of a watchable, worth watching movie. they are using cgi, post production, special effects computer manipulation as the dominant directing guideline. making all the movies become a slides show-like products, either with weak storyline or without any story at all. they are all addicted to transform the simplicity into over-killed complicity or overdone complications, everything turned into chopped up tidbits littered in a loose knitted film, edited together with constant flashbacks, like poorman's quilt, patched up whenever they could find a piece of cloth to patch up the falling apart quilt cover; like poor writers using italic sentences, paragraphs, even chapter after chapter to make up the storyline they failed to deliver more skillfully, blocking the natural flow and tempo of a story that should have been told more fluently. they've spent tons of money in carpentry, welding workmanship, construction more unnecessary settings, more technical gimmicks, meaningless stunts, more explosions from the controlled dynamite....to them, materialism is everything. superfluousness and hollowness have become philosophic depth and nobody dared to say anything negative to these directors.
this 'three times' has reached the 3rd and the last strike to my limit of this kinda movies.