Tsai Ming-liang returns with the sharpest combination yet of his major themes-rain, missed connections, and the poetry of loneliness-juxtaposed this time against something completely unexpected: a martial arts film. It's a rainy night in Taipei (it always is, in Tsai's world), and the crumbling neighborhood kino-barn is showing King Hu's swordplay classic Dragon Inn to a suspiciously inattentive audience of the too-old, too-young, and too-lonely. Most of the audience appears to be elsewhere, either mentally or physically; some sleep through the action, while others cruise the aisles and bathrooms seeking a different kind of “action” entirely. Others could be ghosts, projected specters left from other films. Meanwhile, the staff practices its own cine-rumba in the halls outside, as the gimpy box-office girl keeps one step behind a phantom-like young projectionist. As these offscreen dreamers haltingly put their thoughts of love into very slow motion, the onscreen heights of kinetic frenzies keep blazing on like helpful cues. Visualizing the fantasies of anyone who's ever worked in a movie theater, or just adored being in one, Goodbye, Dragon Inn underscores the essence of why people watch films: the desire to be reminded of what it is to live, and what it means to dream.