There's a scene a bit over half way through that encapsulates the magic of this film and of Zhangke Jia in general. Having been humiliated in the nightclub at the hands of Qiao San, Qiao Ji, one of the two main protagonists, is seen returning to the nightclub with a gang in tow armed with sticks and clubs. His friend Bin Bin sees this and forcibly puts a stop to it. A fight occurs resulting Bin Bin getting a nasty slug to the head. Off screen a TV can be heard. A large group are standing around watching a live broadcast announcing the host city winner for the 2008 Olympics. The two boys are distracted by this and begin watching. Just before Beijing is announced as winner they glance at each other. As the crowd erupts in delight the two boys watch on with no reaction. This kind of transformation (in this case form the personal to the global) is continually taking place throughout the film. Just when most films would move on to the next scene something always happens to transform a scene giving the narrative a layer of complexity that most films don't get close to. I do understand why some people find this style of film making boring. The scenes are long, there's not capital 'D' drama going on but if you like films a bit closer to reality then there's a lot of pleasure to be had here.

When I saw this video in the library the cover was glowing with comments like "Top ten films of the year", "A combination of Godard and Tarantino", "Stunning","Haunting" it put me in the mind-frame that this was going to be a good movie, But in actuality, the comments on the cover could not be further from the truth. I found this movie to me painfully slow, tormentingly dull, and excruciatingly boring, watching paint dry or watching grass grow would be the equivalent.Why it received such high scoring reviews is beyond me.I got an idea, lets make a movie about some dirty,unemployed, one step away from being homeless teenager and film him standing on a street corner smoking, then lets film the same teen eating a bowl of rice and arguing with his mom, then lets film him in a pool hall just sitting on a bench talking to his friend. WOW! that would make a great movie. Maybe in China but not here in the US. 1/10

The title of this film is a fitting description of its entertainment value. The story is a kind of lame social statement about creeping Westernism in China as viewed from the slums. However, the story is so trite, so cliche, so thin, and something we've already been through with Japan in a slew of films, it can't overcome the perfectly awful production value, poor quality of execution, and time wasting filler. The litnay of deficits is too long for this forum. But, for those who may want to give "Unknown Pleasures" a try on DVD, be advised that the DVD I watched had no CC and the default setting for subtitles was *** (three asterisks) and "off". English language subtitles did appear, however, after switching to "on" even through the *** generally means no subtitles available. FYI. (C-)

Learning that this film is from the makers of the tedious PLATFORM is not encouraging and the new work has the same murky color and long, unedited shot coverage.However this one benefits from the stronger narrative elements - nihilistic kids turn to crime as their ambitions are thwarted, no mating with the traveling show chantoosie or becoming a Beijing soldier - along with the detailed account of joyless small town Datong Province life in decaying buildings where finding a US dollar in the liquor bottle the entertainers are plugging represents sudden fortune.In the line of BEIJING BASTARDS and less engaging that GE GE/ BROTHER which covers much the same ground, this still suggests that the Chinese cinema may be evolving a sub-surface layer of effective, critical entertainment.