Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon remains the highest-grossing foreign-language film in U.S. history with $128 million domestically, a record that still outperforms #10 The Handmaiden. Ang Lee's Mandarin-language wuxia epic earned ten Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, a feat matched only by Roma in the foreign-language category. Its rooftop chase sequences and Yo-Yo Ma's cello score, which sold over 1.5 million copies, transformed martial arts cinema into global poetry. The film's graceful wire-fu choreography set a new standard, inspiring the director of #7 Hero to push visual boundaries further.