September 6 movie: Hero. Georg has already posted just about everything I wanted to say. So I will just add that this was amazing. Zhang Yimou's sense of visual spectacle doesn't fail him; the use of color is exquisite. There's been some criticism of the politics behind Hero. I don't know too much about it because I was trying to avoid reviews before I saw the movie. But I think it has something to do with the story about sacrificing oneself to help a tyrant who does good for the people despite his brutality. I guess some people feel like that message is a little convenient for the current Chinese government. Perhaps that is a compromise one has to make in order to make films in cooperation with the Chinese government. Or perhaps Zhang really feels that way. Or perhaps people are reading too much into Hero & it shouldn't be treated as an allegory. My understanding of Chinese history and current politics isn't what it should be, so I can't really come to a decision on that one.
Anyway, back to the movie. All the principles were great -- Jet Li, Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi, Chen Daoming -- (though I didn't even recognize Donnie Yen!) but for me the standout was Maggie Cheung. She is simply luminous. While the plot is more about Jet Li, the emotional core of the movie is the relationship between Cheung and Leung. She's come a long way from playing Jackie Chan's ditzy girlfriend in the Police Story movies.
I added several Maggie Cheung movies to the Netflix queue -- Heroic Trio (which we've seen before), and The Soong Sisters, Ashes of Time and The Dragon from Russia (which we haven't). We've got the DVD of Irma Vep around here somewhere, I might watch that if I have time in the next couple of days.
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Tolja.