Green Snake

Hong Kong’s wildly popular fantasy/wuxia flowering of the pre-Handover 1990s is at its most deliriously exuberant in Tsui Hark’s Green Snake, which follows two beautiful snake sisters who wish to become human. One (Joey Wang) falls in love with a young teacher, but her mischievous and jealous sister (Maggie Cheung) soon vows to break up their union, by any means necessary. A wandering Buddhist monk desires to find and destroy any snake spirits, but he has never met any as determined—or lovely—as these sisters. A triumph of set design, costuming, and choreography, Green Snake is cinema as action and visual splendor.