The Coolidge Corner Theatre

$9.75 general / $6.75 for seniors, students and Museum of Science members / Free for Coolidge members

Winner of four Academy Awards (Best Foreign Language Film, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Score), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is internationally acclaimed director Ang Lee’s homage to the Hong Kong wuxia (martial arts) films that fueled his love of movies as a youth in Taiwan.

Based on the novel by Wang Du Lu, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon revolves around the theft of a legendary sword named Green Destiny and the quest to retrieve it – a quest that leads to a face-off between good and evil. Set against the gorgeous landscapes of nineteenth-century China, the film combines exhilarating martial arts and action sequences choreographed by the great Yuen Wo Ping (best known to American audiences for his work on The Matrix) with dramatic soul and epic romance. The superior cast includes Chow Yun Fat (once dubbed the coolest actor in the world by the Los Angeles Times, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, Chen Pei-pei (an iconic martial arts star of the ‘60s and ‘70s) and Chang Chen. (2 hrs. In Mandarin and Cantonese with English subtitles)

In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, self belief overcomes conventional physics. In sequences that are part adrenaline rush, part poetry, combatants soar over rooftops, run up walls, step on water, and battle atop the branches of bamboo trees. Before the screening, guest speaker Andrew Cohen explores how the laws of physics are bent and why this may enhance the film’s impact.

Andrew Cohen is professor of physics at Boston University, where he created "Cinema Physica," a course that introduces non-science majors to the principles of quantitative scientific reasoning through the analysis of popular films. A former Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, a fellow of the American Physical Society, and president of the Aspen Center for Physics, Professor Cohen conducts research on the physics of elementary particles. He holds degrees in music and physics from Stanford University and received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Harvard University.