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If you've read the other reviews, you know what you're in for. Don't worry about spoilers (none here, but don't worry about others'), because not much happens in the movie. Tsai paints his movies at the speed of Michelangelo painting a ceiling--no, he unreels them at the speed of the epic that's played this old movie house a thousand times. As in other Tsai movies, the colors are rich, and even the starkest images are carefully composed, allowing the film to convey the full depth of feelings.

That's what this movie does. It doesn't tell a story, really, but conveys what it's like to walk along empty city streets on a rainy night, alone. And what it's like to be in a dying old movie palace. The community that has outgrown the old Fu Ho cinema seems to tell its patrons, its employees, and even the building itself that all of them really ought to be somewhere else. But there they are, where they need to be, for the last show.

The movie's point of view is variously that of the young limping woman, the Japanese kid, and the old actors, but ultimately, Tsai tells the story from the theater's point of view, as if he interviewed it Tsai-style, pointing the camera at it and letting the theater speak at its edificial pace. You feel all that it's seen and sees, every day. It's as if the theater knows it's done for, resigned to its fate, not yet ready to die, too tired to fight.

It doesn't matter that the theater is in Taipei. Anyone who had a special place for movies, especially if it's gone, will be able to see that theater in the Fu Ho. I thought of my last visits to Seattle's Coliseum, King and United Artists theaters, and how they clung to life in their final days. All of them could seat hundreds of patrons, maybe a thousand even, and I never once saw them close to filled. The King is now a megachurch, the Coliseum is a Banana Republic, and the UA is dust, with the marquee sign marking its grave. The movies that played there live on in DVDs and shoebox megaplexes, but their days of playing in grand auditoria to great audiences are largely gone. How can "Lawrence of Arabia" be "Lawrence" in a shoebox, or on any CRT or LCD screen?

Norma Desmond told us about the pictures getting smaller. Tsai warns us that the last days of the big screen are here, and that the credits are rolling. Many loved the old moviehouses in their grand glory days, but in "Goodbye Dragon Inn," Tsai shows the beauty of the big theaters as their curtains slowly fall.

Saw this one when it played at the Chicago festival in October. Two gals share a friendship over a summer. And over a summer they change and the friendship changes. Things occasionally stray into melodramatic territory, but fine performances all around, especially by the two female leads, make for a pleasantly watchable movie. The day to day struggles of the leads provide not-so-subtle political subtext about tough times in post-unification Germany.

Andreas Schmidt's subdued portrayal of an underemployed trucker provides a contrast to his more exuberant performance in a similarly blue-collar role in "Guys and Balls."

Many of us, not just gay folks, have tried to imagine what things were like before AIDS. When we do so, playing the classic disco anthems on our turntables or in our minds, it's hard not to look back thru the dark glasses of AIDS-era morality: All those bad things that happened with AIDS means they must have been horribly evil, promiscuous and bad way back then, which is why so many other AIDS movies have this sense of foreboding--sure, there's a party, but we all know it's going to end soon, and we all know how.

Toby, the hero of "Dead Boys' Club," finds a way to revisit the pre-AIDS era without any of that gloom on the horizon. Unsurprisingly, he finds all the fun of being young and discovering the excitement of sexual attraction--just what many a young man before him had found on his first visit to the big city. Sure, there are complications and consequences--some serious, some hilarious--and the threat of HIV isn't taken lightly. But director Mark Christopher perfectly juxtaposes past exuberance and modern realities, letting viewers feel what it's like to recall a world without HIV, while refusing to dismiss or ignore the disease.

This mix of past and present could feel forced or artsy, but it doesn't. "Dead Boys Club" shows the balance of present and past almost the way we feel it, seeing the present in front of us as our minds flash to the past, and then back to the present.

Even though the movie was a student film, I've never seen anything like it. In his next movie, "Alkali, Iowa," Christopher would expand on the idea of looking back at past events that shaped the present. Both films clearly represent a new, exciting, unconventional way of storytelling in movies, which made the choice of Christopher as director of "54" all the more surprising. Someday I hope to see what Christopher had wanted for that film; meanwhile, I'm happy to hear that he's working on other projects.

Oh, yeah: Sure, "Dead Boys Club," is sweet and wistful. It's also uproariously funny. Just recalling this movie brings a smile to my face, on so many levels.