We’re thankfully living in an era when more and more foreign movies and TV shows can become genuine phenomena in the U.S. Thanks to the increasing use of subtitles, and the global distribution of many of these movies, we can see the best of what cinema has to offer from all around the world.
Amazon Prime Video is home to many of these titles, as well as a broader selection of great movies that cut across every imaginable genre. If you’re struggling to find just one movie to watch, you should start with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The movie was a major phenomenon in the U.S. in an era when few international movies got that treatment, and it’s also leaving Prime Video at the end of May. Here are three reasons you should check it out.
It stars Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh
Michelle Yeoh absolutely deserved the Oscar she won for Everything Everywhere All at Once, but she probably should have already had one for Crouching Tiger. Here, Michelle plays a legendary warrior who is in love with another legendary warrior, but the two have repressed their feelings for one another.
In addition to plenty of genuinely stunning action sequences, Yeoh again shows here why she’s one of the most gifted actors of her generation. Without ever actually saying what she’s feeling, everyone in the audience can read her face perfectly. It’s a stunning, deeply emotive performance.
It features some of the best kung fu choreography in history
The wuxia style of fight choreography recent had an American resurgence thanks to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and few movies execute that style more brilliantly than Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It’s not just that these scenes are beautifully conceived and shot, it’s that each character’s fighting style actually tells us a lot about who they are as people.
The fighting is not designed merely to entertain us, but to inform us about these characters and the reasons that they are in conflict with one another. As a result, it becomes a part of the language of the movie itself.
It’s a movie about the pointlessness of repression
Like so many movies set hundreds of years ago, Crouching Tiger is really a movie about people who don’t feel like they can live the way they want to. Each of the characters longs for something they are either keeping themselves from having or are told they can’t have.
It’s immensely satisfying, then, to watch the ways the arcs of each character interact with one another, ultimately leading to a climax that feels like it speaks to the ultimate goal of total liberation. Few movies come to more satisfying conclusions, or leave you with a more complete feeling of weightlessness.
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