Akira Kurosawa
Noah’s Barks pages relating to movie/film director Akira Kurosawa.
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To Live
Between the moral platitudes, typical plot concept and progression until the last 50 minutes that just unnecessarily establish the point of the first 90, Takashi Shimura‘s total of two expressions, and that Akira Kurosawa has many better films under his belt, my reaction towards To Live (Ikiru) is enough to leave even me curious. It’s… (read more)
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Throne of Blood
Awesome, haunting stuff but I’ve noted in my other reviews that I’m a big fan of Akira Kurosawa‘s characterization through dialogue and there isn’t much of that in Throne of Blood. It has an extremely modest runtime for his career being under two hours, but it both does and doesn’t feel its length. It takes… (read more)
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Drunken Angel
Shockingly (or perhaps not), Toshirô Mifune delivers one of his best performances in his first Akira Kurosawa-directed film. Takashi Shimura is his equal here and seeing the two Kurosawa legends interact so closely at the top of their games is a real treat, not to mention their narrative relationship as the elder doctor Shimura bluntly… (read more)
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Stray Dog
Stray Dog may be one of Akira Kurosawa‘s earliest acclaimed movies, but it’s his style of writing down to the bone. This police procedural starts out very slow in his usual tempo but gradually builds as Kurosawa’s hefty dialogue expands upon the characters. His humanism comes through, but surprisingly there are suggestions of nihilism this… (read more)
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The Bad Sleep Well
A fair generalization of Akira Kurosawa movies is that his greatest works have wonderful characterizations while his lesser works are so because they lack this. The Bad Sleep Well is no different. Performances are strong (a fine example of Toshirô Mifune‘s incredible range in particular), the Hamlet-inspired story is conceptually good, but characters are underdeveloped… (read more)
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High and Low
I feel slightly guilty about rating High and Low this high, because while its deliberate pacing with separating the thriller (the high) from the investigation (the low) is a novel idea that lends it a lot of personality, it’s hard for me to not be taken a bit too low after the incredible first half.… (read more)
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Red Beard
Red Beard suffers from a loose overarching storyline (it was adapted from many short stories and it shows) where things sometimes progress sporadically, and certain significant plot details come into play surprisingly late, but good can be said about nearly everything else. Red Beard radiates the warm humanism that defines Akira Kurosawa‘s strength and appeal,… (read more)
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The Hidden Fortress
Certainly not my least favorite Akira Kurosawa movie, but The Hidden Fortress is the first to make me question what the point of it all was. I also wonder what the 139-minute running time went towards, as barely anything of significance happened. Most of the movie consists of the two bandits screwing up and Toshirô… (read more)
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Sanjuro
Though not as interesting or tense as Yojimbo, also directed by Akira Kurosawa, Sanjuro has essentially everything Yojimbo had, just in lesser amounts. The same appeal exists in watching the clever Sanjuro repeatedly outsmart his enemies with the occasional stunning action scenes. The plot itself isn’t as gripping as Yojimbo, since it’s politically-driven. We only… (read more)
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Kagemusha
Almost as frustrating as it is good, because Kagemusha is close to being an all-time masterpiece that’s brought down by the randomly weak writing. Not enough attention is paid to the main character’s development, and many scenes are unimportant, dragged out, or both. If the latter flaw were traded for the former, this would be… (read more)