The film’s lasting effect has less to do with its narratives than the unusual, beautiful, and unforgettable cinematic language Kobayashi creates in their service.     

Its power rests not in intellectual contexts but in the emotionally draining and intense experience it creates.   

Zhang Yimou portrays life as a series of performative gestures under the duress of cultural tradition, prescribed gender roles, and hierarchical power structures.

Jack Nicholson plays one of the most complex and unsolvable screen characters.

A picture that uses genre like a trap to ensnare the viewer in an experience of self-exploration.

One of the most intricately detailed and affectionately realized worlds ever created for a high-concept comedy.

The film is not merely the first of a kind but a true original, occasionally imitated but never matched.

A feminist landmark and a powerful study of transformation and identity.

It epitomizes how Bresson used action to achieve spiritual deliverance in his films.