FrothyMix

For me, it was a case of as soon as I saw her I knew she was evil. lol There is something off about her face. The bottom half looks Asian but she has very Caucasian eyes.

Aren't you special.

I'm with you, though in my heart I have my doubts. :(

Pretty arrogant of you to think of yourself as laughing at those who are wrestling with the ending. You don't know for a fact that it's meant as an "open" ending. Perhaps the director has a very specific end scenario in mind, it's pretty easy to see what that would be.

I would say Yi Yao is/was pretty sunny herself, considering what she went through.

God, what climbed up your butt and died? Is it your thinking that only sweet Disney movies about flowers and rainbows should be made? lol

The twin boy was so sweet to her. Sometimes, if it hurts too much after one of these kind of flicks I just decide to mentally re-interpret the ending to fit my desires. At the end the two of them had gone to the lily pond park and were just talking across the water. :)

I seem to be on a bullying-movie binge, and this is one of the better ones so far. The main actress and two main actors were superb in their roles, and I suppose the evil b***h from Hell was too, since I hated her on site. One quibble might be exactly that: perhaps these bully "types" in this film were a bit too stereotypical/cliche, but then again, how original can you be in your bullying? You're pretty much a "bully type" once you start acting like one. I hate the parents involved of course; I dont' know...it seems like some of these characters could be written with more shades of gray to make them more interesting.

The lead actress was heart-breaking at the center of the film, in a good way. Is it just me? It often seems to me that in Chinese films there are intermittent lines of dialogue that sound dubbed-in; maybe they've gone back and over-dubbed and not very well?

Anway...8.5/10

Which to me is so hard to believe because if teachers, coaches and administrators are on the lookout for it and there are added precautions like full-time hallway and bathroom monitors, I don't see how this could continue. Of course you have the problem of "adults," be they teachers or parents, who are and were bullies themselves. They're never going to cooperate.

I like to think this movie is NOT the boy's fantasy. I saw no hint of that at the end. Of course the film itself is a fantasy, but who knows? :) I was also thinking it's kind of an updated Grimm's Fairy Tale. It was SO wonderfully cathartic to watch those bullies scramble and beg and plead for their lives.

I wanted to tell you I watched Bleak Night recently. One of the BEST bully films I've seen. I'm looking forward to a second watch as I think I'll find a lot of new stuff. Also watched All About Lily Chou Chou, which I disliked with the power of a thousand suns. Pretentious, tedious, downright dull at times, and badly in need of an editor. Ugh. I was utterly sick of Lily by halfway through.. I found no one else in the film to connect with either.

I'll repeat myself: This film is so far superior to that one they are not remotely in the same league. I'm plenty old to know the 1974 version. This isn't that one. This isn't a "copy." It is vastly better on every level.

EXCELLENT. 9/10

Now THIS is a film about bullying and friendship that I will definitely come back to in a few weeks. I have no doubt I will discover more layers than the many I found on first watch. Acting, direction, story, style of story-telling, all remarkable and exceptional. It played with time-frames a bit but not to the extent that I ever lost my bearings. There were several time-frame touches near the end that were particularly powerful and moving. Seamless. The time-switches HELPED convey the story and relevant emotions going on, rather than getting in the way, as with the ridiculous Lily Chou Chou thing.

To find myself feeling, not pity, but deep empathy, for someone who had been such an asshole, was a revelation. I have encountered films before that want me to understand the psychology of a person whose actions have been deplorable, but this is one of the few that went beyond that to make me feel sorry for that person. I wanted to see him be forgiven.

BRAVO.

I happened to watch AALCC last night and absolutely hated it. Not the subject matter or any issues of explicitness that bugged me, I just think it is SO pretentious and deliberately abstruse to the point of being obnoxious. I have little patience for films that purport to tell a story and then place roadblocks, leave out information, include purposefully disjointed scenes, etc. so that the viewer cannot decipher the story. Plus AALCC got so long and boring that I didn't care by the second hour...and a half.

On Edit: Just finished watching this film. Wow. To me, this and that Chou-Chou film should never be compared. BN is FAR superior in every way.

Couldn't disagree more. This is trash.

Thanks for your review. I enjoyed the read, even though I think this film is pretentious, nihilistic garbage. Sometimes a movie is extremely confusing because it's not well-written/directed/produced.

BUT I digress...I'm curious as to whether you have a theory as to why Hoshino became what he became? My theory is that there's no explanation that the director bothered to give us. I think he/she left that "for us to speculate one...." another code phrase for bad film-making. I think Hoshino suffered a brain aneurysm on the boat and threw all their money away and that was the beginning of the end. Makes as much sense as anything else in this flick. Which reminds me: none of those spineless twits seems to have minded much that he threw away their shared money. Just more lazy writing.

I've suffered from depression and this film made me want to kill myself so it would finally end. lol No, seriously, I HAVE struggled with depression all my life and NEVER did anything like any of these vermin did, including the MC, for whom I have ZERO empathy. He had a number of chances to go a different direction and he always chose the greasiest, dirtiest path, right up until that grand asshole tore up his you-know-what. THAT's what finally pushed him over the edge to outrage and action? If that big douche had been nice to him right then he would have gone to the freaking concert. In the end, he was STILL trying to kiss that guy's ass, despite everything. He might be more monstrous than the big bully or that freaking useless little-girl teacher. At least one was honest about his actions and the other was clueless.

Bad, but god did it drag at times.

I disliked this movie a lot more than you but I totally agree about the MC. He felt worse and worse gradually and finally did something about it, but only because someone tore up his ticket to see Lily. He was this spineless, jelly-like thing. I mean, who sets someone up to get you know what, knowing they'll see them around school later?

I agree with you. It is terrible.

I have a feeling I'll be haunted by how bad it was.

Mostly I just prayed for this to come to an end sometime within this decade.
Dull, boring, pretentious, meandering.
Not one redeeming trait among any of the focal characters or many of the supporting peeps.
I mean the MC finally did what someone needed to do but my take was that he was more intellectually challenged than anything else and he was part of the problem(s) all along.
I wanted Lily Chou-Chou to die and her music to end too.
That stupid, vacuous 16 year-old high teacher was completely useless.
WTF was that with the kite flyers and the you-know-what?
The chatroom conceit and the clicking keyboard sounds were annoying af. Whose keyboard sounds like that?
The ending was silly. Is she just supposed to say "oh well, whatever, sure, let's date?"

I wish I weren't so stubborn when it comes to movies, but once I've started one it is unlikely ANYTHING will stop be from seeing it through to the bitter end, if only to confirm how irredeemably bad it really is.

I gave this a 3/10 because the MC was cute. Otherwise 1/10. Just awful.

Oh. OK, then. You ARE out of your mind.