Zhang Yimou

The dangerous streets of Nanjing throw together a group of opposites - a flock of shell-shocked schoolchildren, a dozen seductive courtesans, and a renegade American (Academy Award® winner Christian Bale, The Fighter, The Dark Knight) posing as a priest to save his own skin, or so he thinks - all seeking safety behind a walled cathedral. Trapped by marauding soldiers, over the next few days the prejudices and divides between them will fall away as they unite around a last-ditch plan to protect the children from impending catastrophe.

Lu (Chen Daoming) and Feng (Gong Li) are a devoted couple to separate when Lu is arrested and sent to a labor camp as a political prisoner during the Cultural Revolution. When Lu is released years later, he returns home to find his beloved wife his amnesia and remembers little of her past. Unable to recognize him, she still patiently awaits her husbands return. A stranger within his own family, Lu is determined to awaken his wife's memory through gentle displays of unconditional and eternal love.

Not even close to his best work, Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou--far from a favorite of Chinese authorities, and frequently harassed and stymied in his career--creates an impressive-looking period piece in this gangland story set in the 1930s. Gong Li (Raise the Red Lantern) gives a colorful performance as a nightclub diva who is the mistress of a mob boss. Told from the point of view of a boy (Wang Xiaoxiao) sent by the gangster to wait on the arrogant singer, the story follows these characters over several days as they flee Shanghai to hide out in the countryside.

The kick is never shown, but the entire film is based around it. It's winter in the remote Shaanxi province. Pregnant Qiu Ju (Gong Li, 2046) is married to laidback farmer Qinglai (Liu Pei Qi). When village chief Wang (Lei Lao Sheng) kicks him during an argument, she sets out to ensure that her husband receives medical attention--and justice. Clad in a bulky jacket, face partially obscured by a thick scarf, the strong-willed woman, joined by sister-in-law Meizi (Yang Liu Chun), travels far and wide to find someone who can coerce Wang to apologize (she asked, he refused).

Zhang Yimou (Ju Dou) directed this fascinating, visually formal 1991 film about an educated woman (Gong Li) who is sent off to become the newest wife of a feudal nobleman in 1920s China. Nearly isolated in his spooky, palatial home, she develops relationships with several of the other wives and slowly becomes aware of a hideous legacy of punishment toward more willful women. The film has a brittle and dry quality that is deliberate, but also suggestive of Zhang working through various explorations of his own style (which he resolved in his next film, The Story of Qiu Ju).

No one uses color like Chinese director Zhang Yimou--movies like Raise the Red Lantern or Hero, though different in tone and subject matter, are drenched in rich, luscious shades of red, blue, yellow, and green. House of Flying Daggers is no exception; if they weren't choreographed with such vigorous imagination, the spectacular action sequences would seem little more than an excuse for vivid hues rippling across the screen.