The strange thing about the Three Colours trilogy is that it feels the films are made by different directors, even though they all carry the same themes of individuals made unhappy due to love, making one feel glad not existing in the character's lives. Another common element is the presence of strong secondary characters; in the case of Three Colours Blue, the first and best, we get a strip dancer, in the case of Three Colours White, the least interesting, we get a well-off stranger who meets the protagonist on a train station, and in the case of Three Colours Red, we get a lonely retired judge who is perhaps given greater presence than all the others.
This trilogy of tragic stories is a little overrated because, though good movies, they are pretty much like experimental portrayals, the sort that would attract minimal audience interest.
The Curse of the Golden flower is Zhang Yimou's worst movie I've seen yet, for , besides being really boring, also happens to have a whole bunch of bad (the three brothers) and unbearable (Gong Li) performances and a shitty-ass and very unsatisfying storyline, leaving me wondering what the point was. The visuals were overdone, leaving the movie looking cartoonish. Luckily we had a wonderful performance by the gorgeous ninja lady (whose identity I'm lazy to find).