The fifth, and final (of the set) random cheap movie rental: Hana-Bi. Contrary to expectations, it's not about a girl named a stupid spelling of "Hannah" who is bisexual, but rather about a Japanese detective who is bitter because his wife is terminally ill and his partner was shot and is wheelchair-bound. It sounds like a terribly boring story, doesn't it? The back of the box, and the front-page IMDB review would disagree with that impression, but we wouldn't. Even watching it in fast-forward, it was a painfully slow movie. We made it about 20 minutes in at normal speed (playing games at the same time, admittedly), and then perhaps another half hour or so in fast forward (ie. about 5 minutes fast-forwarding, which would be 30 minutes of movie), and then gave up. Even the amusing brain-splatter as someone's head was shot couldn't make up for the extensive tedium. To give an idea of just how boring, the brain-splatter was obviously the high-point of the 50-ish minutes we endured; the second highest point was something vaguely approaching a joke, consisting of one of the characters suggesting that he was considering trying art, and so should buy a beret. Yes. That bad.
[09:17]
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