"Actor: Ziyi Zhang"

• House Of Flying Daggers | UMD | (05/09/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £21.99

  No one uses colour 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. Government officers Leo and Jin (Asian superstars Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro) set out to destroy an underground rebellion called the House of Flying Daggers (named for their weapon of choice, a curved blade that swoops through the air like a boomerang). Their only chance to find the rebels is a blind women named Mei (Ziyi Zhang, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) who has some lethal kung fu moves of her own. In the guise of an aspiring rebel, Jin escorts Mei through gorgeous forests and fields that become bloody battlegrounds as soldiers try to kill them both. While arrows and spears of bamboo fly through the air, Mei, Jin, and Leo turn against each other in surprising ways, driven by passion and honour. Zhang's previous action/art film, Hero, sometimes sacrificed momentum for sheer visual beauty; House of Flying Daggers finds a more muscular balance of aesthetic splendour and dazzling swordplay. --Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com

• House Of Flying Daggers Steelbook | Blu Ray | (12/05/2014) from £26.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Hero director Zhang Yimou throws scene after stunning scene at you in House of Flying Daggers a dazzling epic of true heart-breaking action passionate romance OSCAR -nominated cinematography and serene beauty. Hoping she will lead them to her fellow assassins two captains (Takeshi Kaneshiro Andy Lau) hatch a plan to capture and trick Mei (Ziyi Zhang - Hero; Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) a beautiful dancer suspected of having ties to the House of Flying Daggers a powerful revolutionary faction. From there begins a lone trail of dangerous encounters impossible love triangles and plot twists in which people are rarely as they seem... With some of the most beautiful martial arts scenes ever filmed this is a visual masterpiece and a feast for the senses.

• 2046 / In The Mood For Love | DVD | (23/05/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  2046: Opening in the year 2046 in which a man named Tak (Takuya Kimura) attempts to persuade wjw1967 (Faye Wong) to travel back in time with him the film soon shifts to the year 1966 in which Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) a struggling author asks the woman he loves Su Li-Zhen (Gong Li) to sail with him from Singapore to Hong Kong on Christmas Eve. She declines and over the next three years we return to Chow Mo-Wan on December 24 as he finds himself with another woman

• The Road Home | DVD | (16/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The latest film by Chinese director Zhang Yimou, The Road Home (1999) is a story of past and present. In black and white we see a young businessman return to a rural village where his father has died. His mother wants a traditional funeral, which involves carrying the coffin several miles in the depths of winter. Then, in flashback and brilliant colour, we are told the story of his parents' courtship. His father had come as the local schoolteacher and had fallen in love with his mother, a local girl. Political complications ensue and they are separated for two years, but at last reunited. This apparently simply tale is told with great insight and dazzlingly beautiful camerawork, in a style which echoes the Italian neo-realist films of the 1940s. Perhaps it doesn't have the complexity of the director's earlier film, Raise the Red Lantern (1991), which starred the luminous Gong Li, but The Road Home has her match in Zhang Ziyi, who also starred in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). On the DVD: The quality of the sound and picture (in 2.35:1 ratio) are excellent. There are no additional features except for subtitles in English and 15 other languages. --Ed Buscombe

• My Wife Is A Gangster 2 | DVD | (25/06/2007) from £14.99   |  Saving you £1.00 (6.67%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Former Scissor Gang leader Eun-jin (Shin Eun-kyung) who now suffers from amnesia defends Jae-cheol (Jun Gyu Park) a restaurateur who employs her from a gangster who wants his business.

• Man On Fire/The Clearing | DVD | (21/05/2007) from £10.78   |  Saving you £-1.79 (-19.90%)   |  RRP £8.99

  House of Flying Daggers The film is set in 859 AD. The once great Tang Dynasty is now in decline. Numerous rebel groups have formed the largest of which is the House of Flying Daggers based in Feng Tian county. The Flying Daggers steal from the rich and give to the poor gaining the support of the locals. The local deputies have managed to kill the leader of the Flying Daggers but the rebel group only becomes stronger due to a mysterious new leader. Jin and Leo two police captains are ordered to kill the new leader within ten days. In order to accomplish this they arrest Mei a blind dancer who is suspected of being the daughter of the old leader. While Mei is incarcerated Jin and Leo decide to play a trick on her; Jin will pretend to be a lone warrior called Wind and break her out of prison. This will gain her trust and hopefully Jin will be lead to the headquarters of Flying Daggers. The plan works but Mei and Jin begin to fall in love on the way. We eventually find out that Mei was only pretending to be blind and has known who Jin was all along and that Leo was working for the House of Flying Daggers as an undercover agent. He had hopes of winning Mei's affection by helping to destroy the government from within. Leo is upset that his many years of working undercover have not succeeded in winning Mei's heart but Jin's three days have. The emotions of the three spill into battle leading to tragedy Bulletproof Monk The film begins in the 1940s as a Tibetan Buddhist monk charged with protecting an ancient scroll passes on his legacy to his pupil. As the student receives the power to safeguard the scroll his aging process is halted and he gives up his name only to be known as the Monk (Chow Yun-Fat). Suddenly the monastery is raided by Nazis led by the ruthless Strucker (Karl Roden). As they attempt to seize the relic the Monk is shot and falls off a cliff taking the scroll with him... However six decades later the Monk appears in America and crosses paths with Kar (Seann William Scott) a tough city kid with a talent for picking pockets. Together the unlikely duo must contend with the forces of the now-elderly Strucker still determined to possess the mystical scroll. As Strucker's granddaughter Nina (Victoria Smurfit) leads his thugs to track down Kar and the Monk the two heroes receive help from the mysterious Jade (Jaime King)...

• Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon -- Superbit | DVD | (14/10/2002) from £5.96   |  Saving you £7.03 (117.95%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is so many things: an historical epic on a grand scale, an Asian martial-arts flick with both great effects and fantastic fighting (choreographed by The Matrix's guru Yuen Wo Ping), a story of magic, revenge and power played with a posse of star-crossed lovers thrown in for good measure. Set during the Qing dynasty (the late 19th century), the film follows the fortunes of righteous warriors Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien (Asian superstars Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh, respectively) whose love for one another has lain too long unspoken. When Li Mu Bai's legendary sword Green Destiny is stolen by wilful aristocrat's daughter Jen (exquisite newcomer Zhang Ziyi), who has been trained in the way of the gangster by Li Mu Bai's arch-rival Jade Fox, the warriors must fight to recover the mystical blade. The plot takes us all across China, from dens of iniquity and sumptuous palaces to the stark plains of the Western desert. Characters chase each other up walls and across roof and treetops to breathtaking effect, and Tan Dun's haunting, Oscar-winning East-West inflected score. Directed by Taiwanese-born Ang Lee and co-written by his longtime collaborator American James Schamus, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon joins the ranks of the team's slate of high-quality, genre-spanning literary adaptations. Although it superficially seems like a return to Ang's Asian roots, there's a clear throughline connecting this with their earlier, Western films given the thematic focus on propriety and family honour (Sense and Sensibility), repressed emotions (The Ice Storm) and divided loyalties in a time of war (Ride with the Devil). Nonetheless, a film this good needs no prior acquaintance with the director's oeuvre; it stands on its own. The only people who might be dismissive of it are jaded chop-socky fans who will probably feel bored with all the romance. Everyone else will love it. --Leslie Felperin On the DVD: As might be expected this superb anamorphic widescreen version of the original 2.35:1 theatrical ratio presents Peter Pau's spellbinding cinematography in its full glory; the same goes for the Dolby 5.1 audio track that showcases Tan Dun's haunting score. Annoyingly, however, the default language option is the dubbed English soundtrack, which means you have to select the original Mandarin version before playing. The extra features are good but not exceptional, with an obligatory "making-of" documentary and commentary from Ang Lee and James Schamus being the best options: the director and producer/cowriter chat amiably and in some detail about their martial arts version of Sense and Sensibility. But it's the breathtaking delight of the seeing the movie in such quality that really counts, and this disc does not disappoint. --Mark Walker

• Rush Hour 2 | Blu Ray | (31/03/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  The unlikely duo of Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker are reunited in this sequel. This time round their investigations take them from Hong Kong to L.A.