| Well Go USA Entertainment | Release Date: October 16, 2015 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
24
Mixed:
4
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
Hou uses very few close-ups here, preferring to tell his story mostly through movement: combat, dance, the act of passing through a landscape of satiny green firs or silvery birch trees and just watching. Shu conveys complicated feelings — longing, regret, anxiety — with little more than the tilt of her chin or the set of her shoulders.
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A mesmerizing slow burn of a martial-arts movie that boldly merges stasis and kinesis, turns momentum into abstraction, and achieves breathtaking new heights of compositional elegance: Shot for shot, it’s perhaps the most ravishingly beautiful film Hou has ever made, and certainly one of his most deeply transporting.
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Like the Barry Lyndon of martial arts movies, every shot has been composed, lit and executed with such care and attention by Hou and his cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-Bing that The Assassin is totally absorbing in its spectacle, from the meticulous details of the interiors to the astonishing, breathtaking locations, from forests and waterfalls, to mountainsides and in one unforgettable moment cliff tops.
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The Assassin is not "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and it is certainly not "Kill Bill". But Hou - a linchpin of Taiwan's New Wave movement, the director of "A City of Sadness" and "The Puppetmaster" - evokes the magic, the majesty, the artistry of the martial-arts movie tradition, and brings a Zen-like sense of observation to the proceedings
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