Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Yashua Kimbrough (jimniexperience) Follows the life of a heartbroken middleman for hit-men, Ou-yang, through his now and memories of Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring (and is probably the movie to inspire Kim Ki-Duk's "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … Spring") … Also touches on the life of Huang Yaoshi , whom is the center of many love interests during the year's drought------ WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS ------Spring: Huang pays a visit to Ou-yang every Spring every year. This time he comes with a gift, a magical wine with the ability to make the drinker forget his memories. Huang travels around the desert to share his wine, and stops by his childhood friend's house to share the gift with him too. His friend turns it down and vows to kill Huang if they were to ever meet again , but the friend will fall to the curse of blindness soon afterwards ..Ou-yang receives a job from a mysterious person named Murong Yang - to kill Huang Yaoshi for seducing then abandoning his sister. At the same time he's contacted by the little sister to kill her brother Yang, fore he won't allow her to be with Huang. The little sister goes into hiding after she receives a death note from Murong Yin, whom claims she is the real lover of Huang's. After a confrontation with Murong Yang he learns the brother is both Yang and Yin - a severe case of multiple personality disorder ….Summer: Ou-yang is visited by a poor woman who wants to avenge her brother who is slain by a group of bandits. At the same time he is visited by a blind swordsman (Huang childhood friend) who's in need for some extra cash. Ou-yang hires him on the job to fight the bandits .. and as the two await the fated day they reminisce over their love life, their lost loves of the past . Ou-yang lost his love to his brother because he couldn't confess his feelings towards her, the blind swordsman lost his wife to Huang ….Fall: Ou-yang stumbles across a skilled but poor swordsman by the name of Hong Qi. He was warned by a fortuneteller a man named Qi will come into his life and shake up his foundation, so Ou-yang is cautious from the beginning. He gets his new recruit some shoes and they go off to gather requests from the local townspeople. Hong Qi takes the poor woman up on her offer to finish off the last of the bandits, and the job costs him his finger. With new money in his pocket but a lost in skill in swordplay , he decides to depart and travel the mountainside with his wife . Ou-yang becomes envious as they depart, fore he once was in the same position with the woman he loved ….Winter: Ou-yang travels to the homeland of the slain blind swordsman to deliver his dying message to his wife. As he leaves the mountain he reflects on the meaning of "peach blossoms" both the Blind Swordsman and Huang keep speaking off. He suddenly has a realization on why Huang comes to visit him every Spring ..Huang secretly loves Ou-yang brothers wife, and he knows she secretly still loves Ou-yang. Huang visits Ou-yang as an excuse so he can visit Ms. Blossoms, because she wants updates on how he's living. When she passes away she gives Huang a magic vase of wine to give to Ou-yang, with the power to rid of his memory of her …Spring: As Ou-yang waits for Huang yearly visit, he learns of his lovers passing. He understands Huang only excuse for visiting was to go see Miss Blossoms, therefore he'll probably never return again. Ou- yang , overcome with thirst one night, decides to drink the entire vase of magic wine his love left for him. Instead of eliminating his memories, it makes him remember more and more ; in the end he makes the bold decision to turn a new leaf and start his life all over again9/10

kluseba ''Ashes of Time'' is a unique art film which is loosely bound upon Jin Yong's wuxia novel ''The Legend of the Condor Heroes''. Despite two blurry action choreographies, this movie can't be considered as a martial arts movie at all. Due to its philosophical content, its numerous metaphors and examples of symbolism and its calm episodic script, this movie could best be categorized as an art-house drama. The movie is separated into five fragments according to the four seasons with the spring season representing both introduction and coda of this piece of art. The director doesn't offer any conclusion to its vague story and challenges the audience to make sense of this film on its own. The only guiding lines of the movie are the changes of season, the transformation of colourful landscapes and the topic of unrequited love and how to deal with this depressing fate. Each character has faced, currently faces or will face a desperate love relationship and everyone of them tries to find a different solution: one of them simply tries to forget the past, another one seeks refuge in isolation and another one wants to assassinate the one who causes all the emotional and mental suffering. In the end, none of the characters can find a satisfying answer on their quest for redemption. Despite the depressing tone, the beginning of the movie can be interpreted as the origin of a quest for redemption while the coda might be seen as an optimistic attempt at renaissance.This film can be interpreted in at least two ways. One possibility is that the main location in form of a bare cabin in the desert is a meeting point for solitary souls who feel outcast from society and who are absorbed by their mental problems. The main character listens to their different stories and often manages to find solutions for them but he is still unable to solve his own problems. Another possibility is that this movie is only about the main character and that the side characters only exist on his confused mind and represent different sides of his shattered soul looking for salvation.Despite its colourful journey, inspiring philosophical content and revolutionary visual component, this courageous piece of art is not appropriate for mainstream audiences and might even be hard to digest for passionate cineasts. The movie's pace is extremely slow and it contains several noticeable lengths towards the middle. While the few fight choreographies could have spiced things up a little bit, they happen to be rather redundant, slow and unspectacular.In the end, you should absolutely watch this if you have an open mind for philosophical art-house experiments that request your intellectual participation in the movie. You should avoid it if you are expecting a vivid wuxia movie or a tense martial arts film because your expectations won't be met and you will end up being disappointed.

gavin6942 A broken-hearted hit man moves to the desert where he finds skilled swordsmen to carry out his contract killings.Roger Ebert wrote, "If Wong Kar-Wai were a painter, he might sometimes create bold, bright swirls on his canvas, with something figurative swimming into view." Further, "I watched attentively, I was dazzled by the beauty of the palate and the fluidity of the camera." He does have a grievance, though. The plot " is somewhat confusing." Well, yes, no one seems to know the plot. Which is weird, considering this version (the so-called redux) is supposed to be an improvement from the original. How can it be improved if no one knows what is going on? Answer: plot is not important, just look at all the vibrant colors!

Michelle Wang First of all, I would like to say that this movie is not easy to understand and it takes more than just one watch to get the idea of it. The director, Kar Wai Wong, is known as a very famous director with unique technique of shooting movies. It is always hard to understand his movie and he likes to use monologue as a special touch. I would like to review this movie from two perspectives: my understanding of the movie from the characters and the techniques the director used to achieve it. The story in the movie happened in a desert which represents city that has been devitalized by modern civilization. As a desert is lack of water, modern city is lack of spiritual pursuing. Every character in the movie is a representation of lack of spiritual aspiration. Modern civilization makes people pursue material possessions more than spiritual and makes people lack of communication and emotionally unstable and complicated. The movie has used a lot of monologue to express modernist's sadness and loss of the decline of classical-ism. Hong Qi's character in the movie is a represent of the peak of modern civilization. He is a simple and honest man that has to become an assassin to live; however, he still kept an honest heart to not kill for an egg (quote from the movie). Here the director is trying to say that even modern civilization is at a peak for modernists to chase, classical-ism is still fighting back. All characters in the movie represent a type of loneliness not because of being alone but emotionally shortage. Everyone is lost at some stage to the modern civilization. Take Mu Rongyan as an example, his/her loneliness drives him/her a split personality. She/he is too lost so that she/he becomes one another and started to talk to himself and becomes more alone. A lot of the monologues in the movie are from Ou Yangfeng's (Xi Du)'s view. His complicated love and hate for his brother and sister in law made him a perfect character on the contrary of classical-ism. Kar Wai Wong used Xi Du's character to represent modern civilization, a cold type full of hatred. The movie used a lot of cool tone to express the depression of classical-ism and the characters' loneliness. There are a lot of monologue used in the movie. We can hardly find any conversation between two characters. More than 100 minutes movie is too short to make an expression, so monologue becomes a good approach. This depression and loneliness we feel all the time from the movie by the monologues represent the complicated emotion of characters. Scenes and music used in the movie have perfectly expressed the loneliness and lose of modernists. Kar Wai Wong designed to shoot the movie from several different angels and edited carefully with music and scenes. Montage has been used very well in the movie. Ashes of time, differs from the traditional type of Kongfu movies. There are no really action scenes but a slow motion of a physical communication between the characters. Kar Wai Wong likes to use the scene of weather change of the desert and lights to be a contrary of modernist's lack of communication. It looks like that the movie shot 6 individual stories vertically; however, the 6 stories are all related. The characters of the stories are somehow overlapped. Even though people may have been hurt and live only in memory and feel vulnerable, it is not right to just escape because the alcohol that said to make people forget about everything is a symbol and it never really existed. Kar Wai Wong has created his own style and art of shooting movies. He is very sensitive about the age and place he lives. In the transition from classical-ism to modern civilization, he sensed this lost that people experience and the affects they get. He is from a unique era from a unique place, Hong Kong, a city that represents several types of cultures which has obviously advantages and disadvantages. The society get developed and lost at the same time. People are lost and lack of communication and unstable to survive. Kar Wai Wong has always been trying to express the loss of classical-ism in his movies. Kar Wai Wong shot a Kongfu movie that was not as a traditional one and tried to reflect the emotion world of modernists. He is very successful on achieving his goal on this particular movie.