Christmas chocolate's all gone, so it's time to think new year's resolutions, which I take fairly seriously. First resolution: lose 10 pounds, minimum, to hit my racing weight. I have until the serious races start, which is Easter for me. No problem: Lent is always a good training period. Wait, there's still some Bailey's in the fridge. But right after that is gone....

The Lovely One and I spent the stroke of the new year in a movie house, watching the conclusion of House of Flying Daggers.

Let's just admit it right now: the Chinese are gonna win. There's a billion of them, they're starting to get rich, and their movies really don't suck. It's time to learn Mandarin.

Ahem. This film is wild. I'm not going to make you wait for my conclusion, or tease it out of the review. I would recommend the film, even if I consider it...I'm not sure what I consider it, except that I didn't feel perfection, and discussing whether or not that was a flaw in the film or the reviewer would require spoiling the heck out of it.

So instead I'll talk about a few peripheral issues without really discussing the film. That should be fun.

The music has the typical spare, Chinese style, and is all the more impressive for it. The wire-fu action? Absurd and jaw-dropping, just the way I like it. The plot? I don't want to spoil it. Indeed, I knew almost nothing about this film before I got into the theatre except that it starred Ziyi Zhang, it was a Chinese costume drama, and I expected something in the way of daggers that flew, and I think that added to my enjoyment.

I want to muse about some of the plot and theme elements, but I'm not going to. So let me just end with the non-spoiler that the dagger-flights are impressive, but that this film, like "Crouching Tiger," is about a lot more than tricky combat.