Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000)

In 2000, Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon exploded across international movie screens like a firecracker, winning numerous awards and widespread critical acclaim, and earning US$213 million in the process. For many viewers it was their first (and in most cases I suspect only) glimpse of wuxia cinema, that specifically Chinese genre combining historical fiction, fantasy, martial arts and super-heroic swordplay.

It's been almost 15 years since its release, and the film impresses just as much as it did the first time around. This isn’t simply a great film, and it isn’t even just the most creatively successful wuxia film of all time – Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is one of the all-time best films in the history of world cinema.

The film focuses on two separated couples: in one case they are separated by class and distance, in another by an overwhelming fear of rejection.

Life of Pi (2012)

I have not read Life of Pi, the widely acclaimed and bestselling 2001 novel by Yann Martel. I have, however, now seen its feature film adaptation of the same name, released in late 2012 and directed by Taiwan's Ang Lee. It is a superlative achievement in filmmaking. It takes a novel broadly claimed to be unfilmable and not only successfully films it but does so with aplomb.

It is a deliberately ambiguous film too. Basically what you get from Life of Pi largely depends upon what you bring to it yourself, and I think that makes it a very special motion picture indeed. To explain why that is, I shall have to discuss the movie's ending - keep that it mind if you continue reading but have not seen the film or (I assume) read the book.