Has anyone seen anything made by Akira Kurosawa? If you don't immediately recognize the name, he's the guy famous for making the 1954 movie 'Seven Samurai' that a recent anime was spinned off from. He's made countless other movies.

Regardless of my title, this is a thread talking about all of his movies and which you thought of what.


The last two days I've been watching Throne of Blood, which is a Macbeth spin-off in a b/w Japanese setting. Basically two friends get lost in the woods and come across an old woman spirit, who tells them that one will become lord of the land, and other's son will be successor after them. The first guy, named Washizu, goes on a murderous rampage and.. well.. If you've seen Macbeth you know what the full outcome of the story is.

For a b/w movie, it's very well done. I found it, like all of this older movies, very slow for only 110 minutes, but fitting for the age he made it. I'm pulled completely into the movie while I watch it. It's also pretty easy to follow (specially if you pay attention to head gear and flags). While Washizu kills, there's not much gore to speak of... Which is also fitting for how the director does things. Akira Kurosawa isn't into movies for excessive gore or rushing people past pretty pictures. He's into it for the story.

Another good part to his movies that I found was that most of the lead roles are played by Toshiro Mifune, who has the best expressions I've ever seen on an actor. The guy definately knows what he's doing and his acting is great.

Ikiru.

Ikiru is one of the most touching movies I've ever seen.

It's about an old man living in post-WWII Japan as a government bureaucrat. He's no one of any real importance, and for the entirety of his life all he's ever done is the same repetitive insignificant loop, in an environment with so much red tape nothing ever really gets done for the people of Japan.

And then he gets diagnosed with stomach cancer.

And finds out he only has a few more years to live.

What follows next is one of the most touching stories you will ever see. Your emotions will need an adult.

It's beautiful. Go see it.

Added Ikiru to my Netflix list.

I still think Seven Samurai is my fav of all of Kurosawa's masterpieces. It's ridiculously long, but so well done that I now own it. The entire story, from the rice-farming peasants that put their entire life into hiring these few samurai to help them battle the greater enemy that terrorizes them to how the different samurai act to the situation. And the plot isn't straightforward black and white, it's has many grey areas that are pointed out through the movie.

I watched Akira Kurosawa: Dreams. And give it a 3 star. I don't know, maybe it was the shortness of each story or the fact that they all, of course, resembled dreams. For example, you get use to the characters in the first story about the foxes and boy, then they cut out right when things get interesting and move onto the next story.

That's not to say it isn't all bad. Some of the stories were very interesting, if not slow-paced. I particularly liked the blizzard one and the watermill village one. Something that really took my imagination on a ride. The choreography was also very neat.