One of the most celebrated and influential films of the 21st century is returning to theaters Friday. A 4K restoration of Ang Lee’s wuxia classic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is getting a one-week nationwide release, including at the Belcourt and the Regal Opry Mills, just in time for star Michelle Yeoh’s Oscar campaign.
A phenomenon at the time of its release, Crouching Tiger is still the highest-grossing non-English-language film at the domestic box office ($128.1 million), and still holds the record for most Oscar nominations for a non-English-language film, alongside 2018’s Roma, with 10. The film took home four Oscars — for Foreign Language Film, Cinematography, Art Direction and Original Score — and was nominated in both the Best Picture and Best Director categories. However, none of the film’s trio of stars — Yeoh, Chow Yun-fat and Zhang Ziyi — was nominated in the acting categories, to the surprise of awards prognosticators and industry insiders.
Twenty-three years later, Yeoh once again finds herself at the center of a multinominated phenomenon of a film, 2022’s madcap multiverse adventure Everything Everywhere All at Once. But this time she has a nomination in the Best Actress field. Although most experts have Cate Blanchett as the odds-on favorite to win for her titanic performance in Todd Field’s hyper-relevant psychodrama Tár, Yeoh has been neck-and-neck with the two-time Oscar winner throughout the awards circuit, which makes the rerelease of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon a little more pertinent.
The 4K restoration looks pristine. It not only highlights the film’s groundbreaking wire-fu martial arts sequences and stunning vistas, but the movie star performances from Yun-fat, Ziyi and especially Yeoh as well.
Any Yeoh fans, whether multiverse-inspired or longtime appreciators, should check out Lee’s masterwork on the big screen. The film will show Feb. 17-23 at the Belcourt and select Regal and AMC locations.
