A disaffected civil servant in late middle-age (Takashi Shimura) learns that he has terminal cancer and a few months left to live. After the initial shock and panic wears off, he sets out in a last-ditch attempt to find a … Continue reading REVIEW: Ikiru (1952)
Itinerant runner Chota (Utaemon Ichikawa) takes up a job delivering letters for an Edo period courier company. He immediately falls in love with the owner’s daughter – the lovely Oshun. Romance must wait, however, as a plague strikes the village … Continue reading REVIEW: Tengu Hikyaku (1949)
Artist Ichiro Aoe (Toshiro Mifune) meets pop singer Miyako Saigo (Yoshiko Yamaguchi) in the mountains. She has missed her bus, so he offers her a ride back to her hotel on his motorbike. They are photographed together by an opportunistic … Continue reading REVIEW: Scandal (1950)
During a crippling Tokyo heatwave, a homicide detective (Toshiro Mifune) has his gun stolen out of his holster while taking the tram. When the stolen gun is used to murder someone, the desperate rookie teams up with a veteran detective … Continue reading REVIEW: Stray Dog (1949)
They can’t all be winners, as the saying goes. Akira Kurosawa’s eighth directorial feature is also his least effective so far, with a story that is too simple and characters whose over-emotive turmoil destroy any chance of realism or nuance. … Continue reading REVIEW: The Quiet Duel (1949)
One of the most significant actor-director partnerships in history kicked off in 1948, when Akira Kurosawa direct his seventh feature: the atmospheric film noir Drunken Angel. Sanada (Takashi Shimura) is an alcoholic doctor working in a post-war Tokyo suburb. One night … Continue reading REVIEW: Drunken Angel (1948)
Akira Kurosawa’s second feature was a propaganda picture made at the behest of Japan’s military government. That likely prevents it from being anybody’s favourite Kurosawa film, but it does offer a look at his rapidly improving talent behind the camera. … Continue reading REVIEW: The Most Beautiful (1944)
In the mid-1950s, when Japanese cinema finally started to get international recognition, it was largely through the films of Akira Kurosawa. His films struck a chord with festival audiences, and he soon become the most famous Japanese director in the … Continue reading REVIEW: Sanshiro Sugata (1943)
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