|
|
|
Yojimbo
:Description:Kurosawa's blackly humorous film, executed in the style of the American Western, is a sophisticated satire on greed, violence, paranoia, and human weakness. In a nonchalant manner reminiscent of a Bogart hero, a wandering samurai-for-hire (Mifune) turns the war between two clans fighting for control of a small town to his own advantage. One of the most popular Japanese films ever released in the U.S., Yojimbo inspired the Clint Eastwood film A Fistful of Dollars. essential video:This semi-comic 1961 film by legendary director Akira Kurosawa (Rashomon, Ran) was inspired by the American ...
|
|
|
Seven Samurai
:Description:This extraordinary tale of adventure, romance, humor, and suspense has been hailed by critics worldwide as one of the best films of all time. A peasant village hires seven medieval mercenaries to defend it from marauding bandits. When the samurais arrive, a spectacular series of battles begin in which a splendidly mobile camera seems to be everywhere: shooting through foliage, rainstorms, dust, and wind. Toshiro Mifune's performance is ferocious as an overzealous and loudmouthed would-be samurai. He is complemented by the wise, veteran warrior played masterfully by Takashi Shimura. The inspiration for the ...
|
|
|
Sansho the Bailiff
:Description:Set in the 11th century, this critically acclaimed film tells a compelling story of injustice and suffering. When a kindly governor is exiled, his wife is forced into prostitution, and his son and daughter are sold into slavery to the tyrannical bailiff Sansho. With authentic sets and rich imagery, Mizoguchi chillingly re-creates the barbaric feudal society. :On certain days, and in certain moods, it would be easy enough to declare that Kenji Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff is the greatest movie ever made. No disrespect intended to Citizen Kane or The Rules of the ...
|
|
|
Ran
: essential video:As critic Roger Ebert observed in his original review of Ran, this epic tragedy might have been attempted by a younger director, but only the Japanese master Akira Kurosawa, who made the film at age 75, could bring the requisite experience and maturity to this stunning interpretation of Shakespeare's King Lear. It's a film for the ages--one of the few genuine screen masterpieces--and arguably serves as an artistic summation of the great director's career. In this version of the Shakespeare tragedy, the king is a 16th-century warlord (Tatsuya Nakadai as Lord ...
|
|
|
Kagemusha
: essential video:The 1970s were difficult years for the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. Following the box-office failure of his 1970 film Dodes'ka-den and an unsuccessful suicide attempt, Kurosawa was unable to find financial backing in Japan, and he made his acclaimed 1975 film Dersu Uzala in Siberia with Russian financing. With only partial Japanese backing for his epic project Kagemusha, the 70-year-old master then found American support from George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, who served as coexecutive producers (through 20th Century Fox) for this magnificent 1980 production--to that date the most ...
|
|
|
No Regrets for Our Youth
:Description:Kurosawa's first major work is a sweeping and controversial feminist drama set against the oppressive backdrop of prewar Japan. Yukie (Setsuka Hara) is the daughter of a liberal Kyoto law professor; a spirited young woman, she innocently craves the atten :One of the more obscure early finds in master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's oeuvre, this earnest 1946 film explores the nature of politics and passion. The plot centers around the daughter (Setsuko Hara) of an academic as she is thrust into the political and social turmoil of the years leading into the Second World ...
|
|
|
An Autumn Afternoon
: : Deceptively breezy, Yasujiro Ozu's final film, made in 1962, is the lovely culmination of the mysterious writer-director's fascination with family, and the social mechanisms by which different generations fulfill obligations to one another and to themselves. The central character, Shuhei Hirayama (Chishu Ryu, Ozu's longtime collaborator), is a 60-ish executive and widower who slowly grows concerned that his 24-year-old daughter, Michiko (Shima Iwashita), has not married because she feels responsible for taking care of him at home. Taciturn, low-key, but affable, Shuhei is a hard man to read. But through his friendships, ...
|
|
|
Utamaro and His Five Women
: : Deceptively breezy, Yasujiro Ozu's final film, made in 1962, is the lovely culmination of the mysterious writer-director's fascination with family, and the social mechanisms by which different generations fulfill obligations to one another and to themselves. The central character, Shuhei Hirayama (Chishu Ryu, Ozu's longtime collaborator), is a 60-ish executive and widower who slowly grows concerned that his 24-year-old daughter, Michiko (Shima Iwashita), has not married because she feels responsible for taking care of him at home. Taciturn, low-key, but affable, Shuhei is a hard man to read. But through his friendships, ...
|
|
|
Chushingura
:Description:For two hundred years, no other story has captured the hearts and imagination of the Japanese people more than 'Chushingura.' When Lord Asano is forced by a corrupt lord to commit hara kiri, forty-seven loyal samurai seek vengeance. Often referred to as the 'Gone with the Wind' of the Japanese cinema, 'Chushingura' is an unparalleled example of the true samurai spirit. essential video:Chushingura means 'loyalty,' and that potent Japanese theme runs like hot blood throughout this stately samurai epic. It's often called the Gone with the Wind of Japanese cinema, and while ...
|
|
|
Woman in the Dunes
: essential video:In addition to being a celebrated milestone of Japanese cinema, Woman in the Dunes is surely one of the most sensual films ever made--not in the purely erotic sense (although eroticism is certainly a potent element), but as a work of pure cinema, in which cinematography and nature combine as powerful forces of artistic expression, melded with a timeless parable of the human condition. Dialogue is sparse and precise, submitting to dreamlike atmosphere and imagery that is genuinely universal; this is the cinematic equivalent of a prehistoric cave drawing, telling a ...
|
|
