September Film Club

Happy September! Thank you to everyone who made it out to our Summer Series: Directed by Wes Anderson. We had great turnouts and great discussions!

For the month of September, I decided to just randomly pick a film I've never shown before, but that I personally really love, and that choice is Hero.

Hero is a 2002 wuxia film directed, co-written, and produced by Zhang Yimou, and starring Jet Li, Toney Leung Chiu-wai, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Donnie Yen and Chen Doaming. The historical background of the film refers to the Warring States Period in ancient China, when China was divided into 7 states. In 227-221 BC, the Qin state was about to unify the other six states, assassins from the six states were sent to assassinate the king of Qin. One of the most famous incidents was Jing Ke's attempted assassination of the King of Qin. The film was first released in China in 2002. At that time, it was the most expensive project and one of the highest-grossing motion pictures in China. Miramax acquired American market distribution rights, but delayed the release of the film for nearly two years. Quentin Tarantino eventually convinced Miramax to open the film in American theatres on Aug 27, 2004.

The film received positive reviews from critics. It became the first Chinese language movie to op the American box-office, where it stayed for two consecutive weeks. It was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film currently holds a 94% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert awarded it 3.5/4 stars saying this in his review, "Zhang Yimou's Hero is beautiful and beguiling, a martial arts extravaganza defining the styles and lives of its fighters within Chinese tradition. It is also, like Rashomon, a mystery told from more than one point of view; we hear several stories which all could be true, or false. A film like Hero demonstrates how the martial arts genre transcends action and violence and moves into poetry, ballet and philosophy. It is violent only incidentally. What matters is not the manner of death, but the manner of dying: In a society that takes a Zen approach to swordplay and death, one might win by losing. Zhang Yimou...once again creates a visual poem of extraordinary beauty."

Here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgsddFEe9Oc

We will be meeting Thursday, Sept. 21 at 5:30pm

Hope to see you there!