As more of his contemporaries have become practiced in making international wuxia blockbusters such as Hero, the uniqueness of Wong Kar Wai's poetic and enigmatic Ashes of Time, released in the mid-'90s, becomes clearer. Artful without heightened, action-filled pageantry, Ashes is a non-linear meditation on memory and loss that happens to be a martial arts film. The current U.S. DVD release doesn't do it justice; find a foreign version or see it in the theater, if you can.