Chang Chen

He directed an adaptation that ostensibly tells the story of a stolen fabled sword, the Green Destiny, and the arduous multi-generational journey taken to get it back.

And the cast he assembled is legendary, a Pan-Asian powerhouse, Michelle Yeoh, Chang Chen, Chow Yun-fat, and a star-making turn by Zhang Ziyi.

And what Ang Lee does brilliantly is he takes the literal soaring of the wuxia genre, the wire work, the characters literally running across rooftops and fighting while balanced on the swaying tips of bamboo forests-

And he uses that physical weightlessness to contrast the intense heavy emotional repression of the characters