Rating: 
Summary: Typical on the genre, disappointing end
Review: This movie has a very Eastern flavor to it. The ending is very grating and unsatisfactory to many (including me) western minds. Having said that, I should point out that if you like this type of film, it would probably receive 5 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Peter Pan not Kung FU
Review: I wish there were negative stars. This movie was THE MOST boring movie I have ever seen. I love kung fu movies but come on, flying on rooftops is not kung fu it is Peter Pan stuff. I fell asleep at least 4 times before I took this load of hype out of my DVD player. I will take my action in form of Die Hard or the Matrix please!
Rating:
Summary: Am I the only person that HATED this?
Review: I'm guessing so, based on the number of positive reviews. Maybe it's because I hate "Martial Arts" films to begin with, but I literally fell asleep in the middle of this movie. I watched it with my fiance when it came out on DVD...thank goodness we only rented it. But, I heard that it was excellent, so I decided to try it out. First of all, even though it is part fantasy, the whole thing with the characters flying on the rooftops and treetops just seemed laughable to me. In the context of the movie, it just didn't seem to work for my taste. Now, I certainly don't begrudge anybody for liking it, because it does have a lot of fans. I just wanted to get my opinion out there in case there is someone out there like me. My guess would be that if you don't like Martial Arts movies to begin with, you most likely won't care for this either.
Rating: 
Summary: Should have won the Best Picture Oscar
Review: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon stands tall as one of the best movies I have ever seen. I first saw it in the theater, where it was in Mandarin with English subtitles. It was a very moving film, and I think that is why even with the DVD in my collection I still prefer to see it that way.Everything about this movie is absolutely second to none. All of the actors performances are outstanding. The story is romantic, heartbreaking, and adventurous. The backdrop is breathtaking. The music is hauntingly beautiful. Others have written full length reviews providing a detailed map of this movie so I will not bore the reader with that information. Instead, I will say that this movie had me glued to the screen the first time I saw it and I have seen it several times since purchasing the DVD. Although many scenes involve superhuman feats and lots of great martial arts work, the movie's strength is in its story and it was a success because of the great work of all the actors and production crew. I was disappointed that this picture did not win the Best Picture Oscar because I really felt that it was the best movie I saw that year and one of the best I've ever seen. I think perhaps it failed to win only due to being a foreign language film. Now you can enjoy the picture without that minor hinderance, should you choose to. If DVD extras are you're only reason for wanting this film, you will likely be disappointed. If you're looking for a good film to add to your collection, this would be a good addition.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and elegant
Review: One of the more talked about movies in several years. Fantasy, action, drama, humor and romance. If Star Wars was Space Opera than this is Chinese Martial Arts Opera. Everything from the cinematography to the choreography is stunning and meticulous. One of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen in sight and sound. The story, like all great stories, is deceptively simple. A naive but talented princess steals a precious sword and two great warriors pursue her. Themes of love, loyalty, destiny, desire, honor and duty are explored in a movie filmed all over China. Zhang Ziyi is incredible in the film's crucial role. She is the naive warrior wannabe. She has the talent but not the understanding or the heart. She is all for the glory but rejects the sacrifice. Her's is the classically mythological journey of the awakening of self-awareness. The same journey Odysseus, Buddha, King Arthur, Jesus, Gilgamesh, Luke Skywalker and Frodo Baggins endured. The search we all endure to understand ourselves and our place in the world. A lush labor of love and one the best movies of the last five years.
Rating:
Summary: Overrated, but has its moments
Review: If you could, for one moment, forget that this film was Chinese and there was no language barriers involved. Switch the Chinese actors to Americans and made the sword fights into gun fights, then this is not a special film by any means. I think Americans are so excited about this film because they rarely get to see this genre in the states that is very common in many Asian countries. This story is built around relationships. Mubai with Jen, Jen with Xiao Lone, Mubai with Michelle Yoeh's character. One thing that this film manages to do fairly well is the intertwine these stories seamlessly. I loved the score by Tan Dun and the song featuring Coco Lee. This film also has several major fight scenes. Although these are well choreographed, they seem a bit implausible (too much flying. and that toe on water was ridiculous). I felt the characters' madarin were a little off(no offense, because they had to learn it in a month or something). I don't believe this film deserved an Oscar nomination. Soon, more Asian kung fu films will be flying into the U.S. and the population will be jaded and tired of these as they have tired with the Western.
Rating:
Summary: it's not an action movie, it's a drama
Review: This was definitely the best movie of 2000. How Gladiator got past this is way beyond me. One thing I'd like contribute is some thoughts about the overall themes in the movie. In the end, I think, Ang Lee sets up several different zones of tension: Between youth and age, between men and women, between discipline and desire and between love and duty. In order to get to some sort of satisfying interpretation of the meaning of the end of the movie, we really have to understand all four tensions and the nexus that this creates in the plot. When Jen asks Li Mubai "Is it the sword you want, or me?" this is one of the critical points in the movie. On the one hand Li Mubai and Yu Shulian are inextricably linked. On the other, Li is being offered a chance to revitalize his earthly life through youth either sexually as the lover of a younger woman, or as a teacher if Jen would agree to become the "ultra-disciple" that every true teacher longs for. Ang Lee saves Li Mubai from making this decision by having Jen faint. As in other incidents in the film, this incident highlights Li's major character flaw, indecision or weakness of will. Something that a number of people have noted is that the climactic fight scenes in the movie are really between Yu Shulian and Jen. An explanation of this conflict might come from the ways in which Jen refuses to accept either Yu Shulian's path of discipline (thus subjecting herself to authority) or a life of total anarchy on the run with Jade Fox. As a younger woman she is trying to establish an independent way for herself on her own terms. This is perhaps one of the things about her character that endears her to western and younger audiences in particular. The tension between men and women is something that has been remarked upon by many observer. One example of this is the background story to Jade Fox and her rebellion against Wudang (as a woman she could be the lover of Li Mubai's teacher but could never be a student). Ang Lee does not resolve this conflict either. He certainly raises the issue of androcentrism in the Jiang Hu world and one notes with dismay that the characters which challenge the patriarchal system (Jade Fox) are cut down or self-sacrifice (Jen and perhaps even Yu Shulian). Nevertheless, the sympathies of the film in both narrative and affect lie firmly with the women: While the women are generously drawn and rendered as fully three-dimensional characters, the men (even Li Mubai) seem more hesitant or unidimensional. Wudang is not a sheltering company of brothers but a flat and rather chilly place. The last two conflicts (between duty and love and discipline and desire) might at first seem to be the same. However, they differ in one important way: Duty and love are relationships between peoplewhereas discipline and desire are interior states that apply to individuals. In the relationship between Li Mubai and Yu Shulian, duty is manifested in social obligations to one's sworn brothers and sisters (relationships upon which one's membership in society rests), whereas their love for one another conflicts with their obligations to others (in particular the dead) and their own reluctance or fear to speak openly of how they feel. By contrast, discipline and desire are much more individual. Discipline requires the voluntary submission of the individual (as in the case of Yu Shulian's self-imposed fidelity to her dead fiance or as represented by Li Mubai's repeated offer to Jen to become his student). On the opposite side of this relationship, desire is the gratification of individual needs. Ang Lee suggests, in true Buddhist, Confucian and Shakespearean form that the consequences of uncontrolled desire are ultimately disastrous. Jade Fox's desire for martial arts abilities and for revenge motivates her ultimate descent into evil. Desire for autonomy and her own caprice leads Jen to steal the sword Green Destiny and finally causes the death of Li Mubai and Yu Shulian's loss of the love of her life. Within this context, I would suggest that Jen's final decision is an attempt by Ang Lee to respond to these contradictions within the movie. She is finally free but free to do what? She cannot go back to her old life. Her mentor is dead, and she can no longer be a daughter in her father's house. But just as clearly, she cannot become a traditional wife, nor, without Li Mubai, can she enter Wudang, even if she wanted to. In a sense she began the movie reacting to others (resisting her marriage, resisting the roles laid out for respectable young women, resisting the restraints of the Wudang path). In the end she is freed of those restraints but it is clear that she must now carry the burden of the consequences of her actions. In the end, one is left with a number of questions. Did Ang Lee intend to say that women who challenge the authority of men must inevitably lose something they hold dear? That youth without guidance causes destruction? That experience can become crippled by regret or propriety? That the price of freedom is terrifying isolation? Maybe there was a little of all of those in this movie. I totally see why a lot of mainstream US responses were "I really liked this movie until the last 2 minutes" This is because the last two minutes can really only be understood in the context of Chinese notions of duty, obligation and freedom as nothingness. I suspect that Jen's surrender to nothingness as she falls marks a transformation for her. She has become enlightened (in a Buddhist fashion perhaps?). My sympathies however are with Yu Shulian who has to pick up the pieces after everyone else has died and moved on. If Jen represents transcendence then Yu Shulian represents the ability to make your own way forward in a hard world with generosity and courage, one step at a time.
Rating:
Summary: Awful
Review: Extremely fake, cheap, people flying through the air on strings. I rented the movie thinking that "This is going to be a great action movie". I watched about 30 minutes of it then turned it off after seeing someone fly backwards through the air across a courtyard. They fly throughout the movie and it's so obvious how fake it is. Too many moves that aren't in martial arts. If you know nothing about martial arts, have never seen a Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan movie, or just like cheap movies, then you'd enjoy it...
Rating:
Summary: I have the one with subtitles
Review: I bought the one that has the words wrote out. I didn't know there was one that was audio. I wish that I would of bought thtat one. I would like to know where to find one that you don't have to read along with the movie. Any one know where to buy that one. Other than that I thought the movie was great
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly Impressive
Review: This film deserves all the hype it generated. We are presented with a semi-magical realm where the spirit takes flight and a Samurai master comes to terms with his true feelings of love, but tragically- all too late. The award-winning cinematography is exceptional, and goes far beyond the plasticy computer-generated 'flying-man' sequences that one might see in films such as 'Spider Man' or 'Daredevil'. In Crouching Tiger, when the stars take to the air, the realism is so effective it draws upon the inner inclinations one might feel as they become more enlightened or spiritually powerful to take to the skies. Almost everthing about this film is skillfully executed- from the acting, to the storyline, to the soundtrack- it's a visionary movie that is done with great style and is worth renting.
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