Popular reviews

• 

  Review by kailey ★★★★★ 13

  i have officially gotten out of the movie-watching groove. blame school, blame the transition period of my life, blame the state of the whole world right now, blame the internet. i've spent about an hour staring at my computer, trying to come up with a review. blame my slowly melting brain. forgive me if i cannot capture a tenth of the thrill i felt in my gut.

  all men become myth at some point. the film defines itself by stirring image and high feeling. it's all very chivalric and idealistic. baser emotions like lust or jealously or anger are pushed aside as unworthy. the main couple of the film is first portrayed as human and that elicits a hearty guffaw…

• 

  Review by Jonathan White ★★★½ 17

  Definitions:

  whooh onomatopoeia ; sound made by swinging swords, arms, legs, and all forms of sticks or poles ( with, or without metal appendages )in martial arts movies. Sometimes associated with arrows. Usually repeated at least 3 times. whooh whooh whooh

  whowh onomatopoeia; sound made by magically flying protagonists and or antagonists, often found in the Wuxia sub-genre of martial arts films, as they hurl toward their enemy, often somersaulting during the approach. Often repeated at least twice, corresponding to the number of summersaults. whowh whowh

  woah onomatopeoeia; sound made by audience when witnessing spectacular choreography and sumptuous cinematography often associated with the Wuxia sub-genre of martial arts films. Sometimes repeated twice, once for choreography, and then for cinematography. woah…

• 

  Review by vee ★★★★★ 3

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  tag yourself i'm the version of the lady assassin who killed her crush rather than communicate her feelings effectively with words

• 

  Review by josh lewis ★★★★

  this is action as emotionality, our movements intuitive, the sword an extension of our anger and love. the world is often shaped by violence but we don't have to be.

• 

  Review by reibureibu ★★★★★ 24

  I always struggle to verbalize why exactly I love Hero so much. Of course, it is easy to point at individual elements and sing their praises: coloring, choreography, fictionalization, mythologization, far too many things I would spend far too many hours extolling.

  Recently I had a great talk with the ever-discerning BluShades on film criticism for the most part, but also criticism at large. He shared with me Sontag's Against Interpretation mentioning that it changed his perspective on the art of critique and, after reading it, it definitely did mine. It feels unproductive to sum up what is just a short 10-page essay into a blurb, but essentially Sontag argues that to intellectualize art, to scavenge it for "what it…

• 

  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★ 6

  *Potential spoilers for the broad strokes of the plot. If you haven't seen this yet and are looking for a quick reason to check it out, it has some of the most beautiful photography outside of a Terrence Malick picture. If you like kung-fu movies and don't mind "wire-fu" then you'll probably like Hero.*

  "A warrior's ultimate act is to lay down his sword."

  Hero is a historical wuxia, or a king-fu period piece, but the battles between warriors stand in for a more important battle happening beneath the surface of the film. The fight scenes are highly choreographed and excessively stylized (a practice commonly referred to as "wire-fu"), and this gives them a mythical quality that indicates they may…

• 

  Review by Sean Fennessey ★★★★½ 8

  This movie has the same effect on me as The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars.

  Five stars if they go back and fix the CGI arrows.

• 

  Review by Cadinho93 ★★★★★

  "Great calligraphy."

  Hero is a historical martial arts drama. This film has great use of color, with the story being the main focus in this film, although there are a lot of cool fight scenes and a very philosophical film with deep themes. It basically has a stunningly beautiful cinematography, the action enthralling and the plot interesting enough to make it one of the most entertaining Chinese films.

  Hero is a visually stunning film which tells a wonderful story. It's centered around three men, a swordsman: Nameless (Jet Li), an emperor: the King of Qin (Chen Daoming) and a calligrapher: Broken Sword (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), who are incredibly passionate and driven. All of the main characters, including the supporting female…

• 

  Review by Felipe ★★★★½

  💗💜💙💚💛💗💜💙💚💛❤
  💙                      💙
  💗     The colors.      💗
  💜                      💜 
  💙    Oh the colors.    💙
  💚                      💚
  💛   Am I in Heaven?   💛
  💗                      💗
  💜    Is this what       💜
  💙  Heaven looks like?  💙
  💚                      💚
  💜💙💚💛💗💜💙💚💛💗❤

• 

  Review by Sally Jane Black 10

  A Rashomonian wuxia made by the person who brought us the bright, crisp melancholy of Raise the Red Lantern, this film more or less could not fail. Though one of its themes, as far as I can follow them, seem to be about sacrifice for greater ideals in unsettling nationalistic terms, the more intriguing idea of a warrior who is unwilling to kill, this paradoxical philosophy of strength through unwielded power, overwhelms the downside. More so, though, the beautiful dance of blade, elements, and environment that this film is dominated by puts everything else to shame.

  There are some who might sully this film with the qualifier that it's "cool." Those people are boorish fools. "Cool" is for pop-art and…

• 

  Review by Sean Gilman ★★★★★ 1

  There’s a little making-of featurette on the Miramax DVD of Hero that has some decent interviews with the cast and crew along with some breathless Hollywood narration. Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung and Donnie Yen speak impeccable English, which makes one wonder what might have been if Hollywood wasn’t so racist and dumb, while Ching Siu-tung sports some questionably-dyed hair and Christopher Doyle complains about the lack of bars in the remote deserts of Western China. After the usual rigamarole about shooting challenges and directorial perfectionism, someone asked Zhang Yimou what he thought the film was about, which he either answered honestly or deftly dodged by asserting that what he wanted people to take from the film, long after they’ve forgotten…

• 

  Review by Graham ★★★★

  A film almost as stunning as Maggie Cheung.
  Almost.