Criterion Collection

Portions of this review were lifted from the previous Criterion Collection edition review.  Now on to the review…

After making such internationally renowned samurai period films such as Rashomon and The Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa did make another film, Yojimbo, with a decidedly different tone, bordering on dark comedy. The opening shot is of Sanjuro (Toshiro Mifune, Throne of Blood), a samurai without a master, who look  at a mountain, and suddenly scratches his head, as if his hair is on too tight.
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Let me get this out of the way right up front; I really enjoyed Memoirs of a Geisha. Now, I am certainly smart enough to understand that the film was not entirely realistic, and there were some plot developments that pushed suspension of disbelief pretty far, but I wound it charming and entertaining. It was so charming, in fact, that it was often times easy to forget that you were essentially watching a movie about whores. You can romance it all you want, but at the end of the day a Geisha is really nothing mo…
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In an odd sort of way, Samurai Spy has the feel of one of the Sean Connery Bond films. The plot seems to be more convoluted than it really needs to be, and there are many scenes that show a character quiet and alone, as they discover a new piece of the plot puzzle for themselves. I would say that parts of the film could be a bit too complex for some American audiences to follow, as so much of the story is driven by Japanese character and clan names. It seems that Criterion anticipated this problem, as they hav…
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First and foremost, it is important to note that this is a large, “A” list film. While many samurai movies are low budget stories, everything about this beautiful film is first rate. As you can see by the two hour running time, the story comes first in this piece, with the swordplay coming in later, merely to serve the story.

And an important story it is. In 1967, World War II was still fresh in the minds of many Japanese citizens. These people, who had never questioned authority in thousands of years, had j…
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Kill! plays like something of a dark spaghetti western comedy. Honestly, how many times have you heard that line before? A warrior with no master wanders into a ghost town, tired and hungry, to find the only restaurateur in town dead. As he begins to contemplate where he will find his next meal, a farmer wonders into town under similar circumstances. The two form a loose partnership as they discover that they have placed themselves in the middle of a standoff between the local samurai and yakuza clans. As they…
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Call me crazy, but I came away from this disc feeling like I had just watched a samurai western. On one side, the film is filled with Japanese warriors, fantastic swordfighting and talk of honor and revenge. On the other hand, a major subplot of the film revolves around panning for gold in the mountains, and fighting over the claims. This excellent 1965 film has much in common with great westerns, such as The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, including interesting plot twists and a complicated-yet-comical sidekick t…
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