Taiwan-born film director Ang Lee’s (李安) Oscar-award-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍) has been selected by Time Magazine as one of the 10 greatest movies made since 2000.
The film, which Time film critic Richard Corliss praised as an “entrancing blend of Eastern physical grace and Western intensity of performance,” is the only Chinese-language film to make Time’s 10 Greatest Movies of the Millennium list.
Crouching Tiger is a movie of “gravity and buoyancy, of high art and higher spirits,” Corliss wrote in a piece about the film.
While making his reputation with adult dramas such as The Wedding Banquet (喜宴) and Sense and Sensibility, Corliss said, Lee was “a child, a fan of martial arts novels and movies screaming to get out.” The two Lees, he said, met and melded in Crouching Tiger.
“It’s contemplative and it kicks ass,” as the actors “are navigating the murkier regions of personal responsibility and unspoken love” when they are not “flying across roofs and balancing on treetops in fight scenes,” Corliss wrote.
The film, which ranks fourth on the magazine’s list, won the 2001 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in addition to winning three other Academy awards.
Lee clinched the Academy Award for best director in 2006 for his critically acclaimed romantic drama Brokeback Mountain, which ranks 10th among the highest-grossing romance films of all time.
Rounding out Time’s 10 Greatest Movies of the Millennium are Wall.E (2008); The Lord of the Rings (2001-03); Avatar (2009); The White Ribbon (2009); The Hurt Locker (2009); Synecdoche, New York (2008); Devdas (2002); Moulin Rouge! (2001); and The Artist (2011).
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