A Touch of Zen (1969)

Yowza. This grand, sweeping martial arts epic put China on the map as a filmic power and for good reason -- it's some pretty extraordinary stuff. Slow going in the first forty-five minutes, but the patient are rewarded with some of the finest eye-filling cinema known to man. Often literally feels like poetry, a visual equivalent of a Chinese epic. If you wanna know where Ang Lee got the idea for the bamboo-treetop fight in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, here you go. Stunning.

Grade: A-