Nashville (dir. Robert Altman, 1975) – Amazing how much you can forget about a film in five days. Nashville came across as so much more scathing this time around than…
It had been too long since a Kurosawa viewing, and certainly too long since a first-time viewing. Hadn’t seen the alternately titled I Live In Fear or Record of a…
Saw this one the other week at the Stanford Theatre during the wonderful Kurosawa run (which is not yet over). First time to have seen it in 35mm, which was…
So good, and, as old faithful Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto insists, not simply a sequel to Yojimbo! Rather, a totally different film in tone and style; different in kind and not just…
Gilda (dir. Charles Vidor, 1946): The tagline read, “Was there ever a woman like Gilda?” Indeed. Upon a more recent viewing of this long-been favorite, it appears much less textbook…
For being based on (and according to Akira Kurosawa, the same movie as) Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars contrasts with Kurosawa’s film in important ways. It is no The Magnificent…
There are so many views as to the “point” of Rashomon or what stands out most about it that it nearly seems a pointless enterprise to discuss it. The camera…
Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince calls Scandal a “necessary mediocrity,” an appropriate label for the film following Stray Dog and preceding Rashomon. Prince also points out that the “amazingly pedestrian” imagery…
Drunken Angel holds a unique position in Akira Kurosawa’s oeuvre, being a sort of bridge between his lesser-known early films and his much more famous mid-career films. The former category,…
Watched Red Beard the other day for the thousandth time. For those of you unfamiliar, that would be a classic Kurosawa, 1965. It’s the first one I ever saw, and…
