Hm. Kurosawa? Check. Toshiro Mifune? Check. Samurai action? Check. Humor? Check. Hm. Must be the sequel to Yojimbo, Sanjuro.
Yeah, but I didn’t get a lot out of this one. Once again Mifune returns as the nameless ronin, this time taking the name of “Tsubaki Sanjuro”…. And pretty much does the same thing here that he [...]
Finally got around to visiting acclaimed director Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story. After a few minutes of “WTF did I get myself into? Why is this so great?” It hit me. This is really good stuff. Really.
What am I talking about? Well, the first few scenes involve an older couple living in the small fishing village [...]
Rashomon | 羅生門 (1950)
I dunno about Rashomon. One of Kurosawa’s definitive classics, you really have to be prepared to stick through the whole thing to get to the heart of the matter. Until then, you’re kind of wondering what the point of it all is. Which, after all, is the point of it all…. Maybe [...]
Um, well, I can definitely say that 1964’s Onibaba isn’t at all what I was expecting. And that’s a good thing to be sure. For 1964, this is a seriously twisted, frank, raw, provocative, and mesmerizing movie.
Set sometime in Japan’s war torn medieval period, we find an old woman (Nobuko Otawa) and her daughter-in-law (Jitsuko [...]
Seven Samurai | 七人の侍 (1954)
There are epic movies. And then there are epics. The ones that the other so-called epic films look up to and say “someday I want to be just like you.”
Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is one of the few in that latter category. It’s also one of the few films I’ve seen [...]
