Say what you will about Zhang Yimou's previous two swords and kung fu flicks, but they sure were pretty. Lots of luscious colors and tableaus straight out of paintings. But they also weren't the most exciting films you’ve ever seen. You either gasped at the prettiness and rolled with it or you said nice shot and hoped for something else to happen. For us, Hero was the one that blew us away, the use of color so dazzling and original it left us awe-struck. House of the Flying Daggers, however, didn't do it for us. ...

There's not a whole lot of movies opening up this weekend, or at least none mentioned in the Chron as they were too busy with their annual "New Year's Eve Hat" cut-out, a tradition looked forward to by no one and an idea so lame it doesn't even work ironically. Suffice it to say, that with the big holiday movies already being released, the studios have been quietly dumping their Oscar-bait movies on us, those......

Finally, our holiday film season begins. There are so many great movies opening this weekend that we don't know where to begin. On the bigger-budgeted side of things, we are embarassed by the twin riches of The House of Flying Daggers, a Tang-dynasty-set police drama with all the breathtaking martial arts we've come to expect from any movie starring the lovely Ziyi Zhang, and the film version of San Francisco novelist Daniel Handler's A Series......