Different strokes and all that, but while not a barrel of laugh and particularly cheerful, I didn't find it anywhere near punishing and actually quite touching.
Not a masterpiece, but a more than decent first feature, and I'm quite curious to see what comes next for the director.

The review actually spoils it.

Don't, it is that bad and pointless.

I saw it at a festival last October, I was pretty excited having recently seen Indentification Marks: None and Walkover and generally being aware that he had made a few great if not widely available movies.
This was an F all right, I was giving it the benefit of the doubt depending on what the end game was, Mike is…

His brother who was apparently solely responsible for the financial aspect of the productions (which I can perfectly believe) blamed it on inexperience, given that it was over twenty years ago now and only lasted for a handful of years, it indeed looks like it wasn't necessarily ill-intent.

He's a movie director in Europe, a lot of his financing will come from public funds. If not illegal, tax avoidance is then extra icky.

You can do it when browsing on your computer, as well as chronologically if you want to look for older stuff.

Something like that. Netflix doesn't really need to have any publicity surrounding the movie before the release as they don't need to make sure people show up in the cinema on opening weekend.

I saw it six months ago, and it sure looks pretty and is quite agreeable to follow, but it mostly seemed like an excuse for the director to film pretty women.

Yes, it was hated by pretty much everyone who saw it at (I want to say Sundance), does anyone know if the movie has been significantly altered since then? The more than year that has passed since the premiere would then make sense a bit of sense.

And A Touch Of Zen apparently doesn't even deserve a mention as noteworthy, do you have something against King Hu? You've skipped his three classics.

Just a small nit-pick, his running into army buddies in Playtime doesn't suggest he could hold down a job at some point.
There was at the time in France a compulsory military service, all able-bodied males spent a year in the army at 18 or when they finished their studies if they went into higher education (some state…

That was the main reason why I went to see it.

I didn't find It Follows all that scary either (not helped by seeing it in a surprise screening, the slow trickle out of the audience who didn't care for it kind of killed any possible tension), and actually liked The Witch more.

After how hyped it was as the scariest thing since It Follows, I unsurprisingly didn't find it all that scary. I still thought it was a great movie thanks to the direction, you really should go.

On The Silver Globe was released but whether it was actually finished is debatable, a voice-over replaces the parts he couldn't complete.

I don't remember the acting as being outrageously bad (it's been a few months since I've seen it) and it is definitely understandable (but then I speak with a strong accent and so do most of my friends and colleagues).
It was a packed cinema at a festival, I guess a screening with a smaller audience is less likely to…

It's not really bad, it just comes across as tone-deaf with an earnestness that could all too easily be mistaken for a caricature.
The Q&A afterwards made it clear Jia doesn't speak English, I'm not sure who helped him write these lines, but something clearly got lost somewhere.
It's possible to look past it and focus…

Sade's Justine has apparently been made into a movie, it's what you're looking for (assuming it's faithful enough to the novel).

The last part of the film induced mass laughter in the cinema where I saw it, and it's fair to assume it wasn't supposed to.
I still liked it overall, but you're probably better off watching Platform or Unknown Pleasures first; I liked The World well enough but I find his other movies better. As you say they tend to…