Millennium Mambo (2001) review

Certainly the most tolerable of all the Hou films I've seen to date (I happen to be missing some of his 80's work), his numbing visual aesthetic perfectly accents the numbing club/drug scene his characters inhabit - it was only around the hour and change mark that I checked out mentally, sick of being jerked around by what thin story there is. I still find the quality of his work to be questionable - his 'you-fill-in-the-blanks' approach is not a convincing ploy - although this is the first time I've ever seen something by him and not wanted to throw my ceramic mug filled with hot tea through my television set. Also, for all their faults (at least in my eyes), his films are at least consistently wondrous in appearance, and the use of color tints and slow motion is dreamy (at least in a Wong Kar-Wai sense).