Ruben Martinez (DragonEyeMorrison)

All right, i guess i should write a proper review for this, and in the process maybe explain a bit why this was reason enough to avoid any movies by this director for life. Spoilers ahead, but trust me, you'll thank me later.

So, Bjorks character comes to "AMERICA" and gets a shitty job in a shitty factory. She's poor and lives alone with her son, she's going blind and she also seems to have some kind of mental disorder, because she imagines people dancing like if it was some old hollywood musical. Ah yes, this is the movie telling you that she's "escaping reality" into a (dumb) fantasy world. Her love for this shitty dancing musical world causes her to make a mistake with a machine in the factory and get her stupid blind ass fired. Now she won't have enough money to pay for a future operation for his son, to prevent him going blind (and hopefully becoming an idiot just like her) but oh noes! Turns out that her evil american friends, one of them that is, steal her money. Some confussion and other very fucking stupid plot devices make her go to jail for killing the evil american that stole her money.

So she has to go to a trial, while going even more blind, and still dreaming of her silly musical numbers. Some more dumb shit happens because, again, she's a poor hopeless soul living in the EVIL UNITED STATES OF FACISTMERICA where she gets accused of being a commie and what not (this is USA in the 60s i think) One of her non-evil american friends want to get her a lawyer but Bjork/Selma, being as stupid as she is, refuses any help. She gets hanged, cue to another awful song and the end.

See? I told you i was going to save you time and probably money. The director of this nonesense, some douche that calls himself "Von", has this childish and one-dimensional view that the USA is the biggest source of evil this world has ever seen. That everything going on there fucks up their poor citizens, specially women, or foreigners. He's like a 18 year old collegue student who read too many Marx and Voltaire and thinks he just found out the "real true" about the world. Idiotic political agenda aside, this is a cinematic exercise in painful boredom, crap-tistic "sensibilities" and lots of naked emperor crap going on. Characters are made of cheap cardboard and the story wouldn't even get approved for an episode of Grey's Anatomy. I guess movies like this need to exist in order to......actually, i have no idea. All this said, what a waste of such a good support cast. Oh yeah, Bjork should never, ever, be in a movie for the rest of her life.

Starts well, then it becomes the usual feel-good-cliche-fest that Crowe loves to make. The supporting cast helps a lot, except Kate Hudson that is, that woman should not be allowed to work in movies ever again.

Anyone who doesn't, at least, respect this film just fails at life. Stop watching movies right now and devote your time to a more fit hobbie, like throwing used light bulbs behind dumpsters and such.

A film like Hana Bi perfectly embodies the phrase "less is more". Kitano doesn't waste any time in pointless exposition, dialogues and what not. He goes straight to the core of things, going from a violent scene to a tender moment to a funny part in a way that many so called directors could only dream about pulling out. One of the most important films of past years, instant classic and mandatory view for any so-called "cinema fan".