Reclaiming the legendary Chinese heroine Mulan from Disney (Mulan, 1998), director Jingle Ma gives this tale of a girl soldier the full epic treatment, steeping it in vast desert vistas and colossal armies and heart-rending romance. Mulan's story starts as a new imperial decree is promulgated demanding soldiers for the war against the barbarians; she puts on men's clothes and signs up in place of her sick father, then proceeds to rise swiftly through the ranks alongside the one man who knows her secret. As she makes no attempt to conceal her delicate features or disguise her thin voice it's sometimes hard to remember her sex is supposed to be a secret, but the other soldiers seem to buy it. If you can likewise suspend disbelief and allow yourself to be swept along, this is a surprisingly moving film, full of meditations on the horror of war and its subsumption of the individual, as well as suitably stirring examples of bravery and sacrifice and undying love.