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For Akira Kurosawa, “Man is a genius when he is dreaming.” While films like Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and Ran quickly spring to mind when one thinks of the Japanese filmmaker, some of his deeper cuts have inevitably slipped under the radar.

A still from High and Low | Credits: Toho Co

For a career that spanned over fifty years, with over thirty films released across multiple decades, even Kurosawa’s lesser-known works offer a compelling watch for film buffs.

Here, we rank ten overlooked Kurosawa films that show the breadth of the director’s cinema, his boundless curiosity, and his innate understanding of humanity.

10. I Live in Fear (1955)

Akira Kurosawa opens with Tokyo’s bustling intersections, scored by a theremin – a 1950s Atomic Age paranoia hallmark. We meet Dr. Harada, a dentist-cum-mediator, summoned to resolve a family dispute involving Kiichi Nakajima, a wealthy industrialist.

Nakajima’s obsession with nuclear fallout drives...

"Seven Samurai" by master Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa might just be the most remade film ever. The 1954 film is, sure enough, about seven samurai recruited to protect a farming village from bandits. The setting, themes, and characters are Japanese, but the premise is evergreen. "The Magnificent Seven" is just "Seven Samurai" but with cowboys. "A Bug's Life" retold the story with, well, bugs. "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" episode "Bounty Hunters" recruits the seven from Jedi Knights and alien mercenaries. 

"Star Wars" creator George Lucas is a well-known fan of Kurosawa. (Lucas even helped him finance his 1980 epic "Kagemusha.") The galaxy far, far away isn't the only space franchise that can riff on "Seven Samurai" though. "Star Trek: Enterprise" aped the premise for its season 2 episode, "Marauders."

First, though, why are Kurosawa's films so often remade in spirit (besides them being so good)? One reason is ease of translation. Kurosawa...

Ahead of Grand Theft Hamlet, in which Shakespeare’s play is staged entirely inside a video game, check out cinema’s avenging princes, from Laurence Olivier to Ethan Hawke

When I was 16, for a high school English assignment I composed a short play titled Deconstructing Hamlet, made up entirely of decontextualised quotes from Shakespeare’s play, all placed in conflicting dialogue with each other. It probably wasn’t as clever as I thought at the time, but it was early proof to me of the Danish tragedy’s endless adaptability – a virtue that the film industry has amply seized upon over the past century or so. Even with that in mind, Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane’s ingenious documentary Grand Theft Hamlet, in cinemas next month (and on Mubi early next year), stretches the point further than most, examining a lockdown staging of the play within the online digital realm of Grand Theft Auto,...

Francis Ford Coppola reveals a list of 20 movies that he highly recommends you watch and show "appreciation to the pictures that inspired" him. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Coppola has directed movies such as The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now. Over a decade after his last film, the 85-year-old director's latest movie is Megalopolis, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and is already fiercely divisive ahead of its theatrical release on September 27.

Ahead of Megalopolis' theatrical release, Francis Ford Coppola joined Letterboxd and created a list of 20 movies that he highly recommends. While not complete by any means, the list is simply 20 movies that he enjoys, have inspired him, and would recommend to any fan of cinema or aspiring filmmaker. Check out his list below:

French Cancan (1955) The Bad Sleep Well (1960) The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) Shanghai Express...

Megalopolis director Francis Ford Coppola has joined Letterboxd, the social cataloguing service where members can rate and review films and keep track of what they’ve watched. I’m a little addicted. Coppola has shared a list of twenty films that he would recommend to any cinephile or aspiring filmmaker, which you can check out below.

French Cancan (Jean Renoir) The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa) The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra) Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg) The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey) The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis) The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa) Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu) The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau) The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg) Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan) Punch Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson) Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg) Sunrise (F.W. Murnau) Joyless Street (G.W. Pabst) A Place in the Sun (George Stevens) The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese) After...

The program of the 24th Japanese Film Festival Nippon Connection is complete! From May 28 to June 2, the festival offers the opportunity to delve into Japan's film and cultural scene. The festival presents around 100 short and feature-length films at eight venues, including numerous premieres. Over 60 filmmakers and artists will travel from Japan to Frankfurt am Main, Germany, to present their works to the audience. At the freely accessible grounds of the festival centers Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm and Produktionshaus Naxos, visitors can enjoy the festival atmosphere with a large Japanese market featuring numerous food and craft stands. Detailed information and tickets for all films and events are available at NipponConnection.com.

This year's film selection promises exciting discoveries. Fans of genre films can enjoy Shinji Araki's acclaimed time-loop thriller Penalty Loop, Kaz I Kiriya's apocalyptic drama From The End Of The World, and Shimako Sato's action-packed fantasy adventure The Yin Yang Master Zero.

One of Hollywood's most frustrating recent news stories is that Francis Ford Coppola is having trouble finding distribution for his self-funded passion project, "Megalopolis" (via The Hollywood Reporter). In a just world, making "The Godfather" would grant Coppola a lifetime blank check, but that has never been the world we've lived in.

What you may not be aware of is one of Coppola's influences for his magnum opus. Like his friend "Star Wars" director George Lucas, Coppola looked to Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. While Lucas took after Kurosawa's Jidaigeki (historical) films, Coppola looked to one of the director's contemporary-set films: "The Bad Sleep Well."

Released in 1960 and starring his go-to leading man Toshiro Mifune, the movie is one of Kurosawa's (comparatively) more obscure ones. It was especially overshadowed by "High and Low," the masterful kidnapping thriller that Kurosawa and Mifune released in 1963. Both movies are set in the world of...

Japan during the 1960s saw a surge in crime flicks. Examples include the stylish gangster features by Seijun Suzuki and the darkly comical underworld movies by Kihachi Okamoto. Yet, there were also slower pieced character study crime thrillers that took their time to develop their characters and create overwhelming suspense and atmosphere with powerful themes that made audiences think. Look no further than Akira Kurosawa’s terrific films “The Bad Sleep Well” and “High and Low.” Yet, Kurosawa wasn’t the only notable director to put out poignant noir tales. Right around this time, filmmaker Tomu Uchida had built quite a name for himself with the numerous jidaigeki pictures he made. Occasionally, Uchida would step away from cinematic depictions of feudal Japan to do something more unique in his filmography, such as his phenomenal crime epic, “A Fugitive from the Past.”

on Amazon by clicking...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Roxy Cinema

Three by Spike Lee screen on 35mm this weekend, while Johnny Minotaur plays on 16mm this Sunday, as presented by the Museum of Sex.

Film Forum

The massive Toshiro Mifune continues with emphasis on action films (plus the underseen The Bad Sleep Well).

Museum of the Moving Image

The Woody Strode series closes with Once Upon a Time in the West and Black Jesus, while The Addiction screens on Saturday.

Metrograph

Four films by Jamaa Fanaka play this weekend, while films by Wenders, Chaplin, and Kubrick screen in “Staff Picks: Kim’s Video.”

IFC Center

As Solaris continues screening for its 50th anniversary, Eraserhead, House, and Brazil have showings.

Anthology Film Archives

Three by Dovzhenko play this weekend.

Paris Theater

All That Jazz screens on Friday, while My Fair Lady plays Sunday.

The post NYC Weekend Watch: Three By Spike Lee,...

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There’s no denying that William Shakespeare is one of the most well-known and widely respected literary figures in history: a fountainhead for so much of storytelling to follow. His works from the late 1500s are still relevant today, and several of his plays have been adapted into films. The latest of which, “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” will arrive in theaters on Christmas Day, and on Apple TV+ on January 14, 2022.

Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand star in the spare, Dreyer-esque black-and-white film directed by Joel Coen. If you’re not familiar with the story, Macbeth is met by three witches who reveal great fortunes for his future. Once these fortunes begin to come true,...

Brilliant filmmaking from Japan: Yasuzô Masumura’s film all but screams in protest, that unfettered consumer capitalism is cannibalism, plain and simple. In the radical director’s scathing, savage satire, Tokyo’s desperate advertising ‘Mad Men’ create a fresh new star celebrity to promote their product, only for the warfare of cutthroat competition to shatter careers, fortunes and basic human values. Masumura’s cinematic onslaught is at least ten years ahead of its time, in design, direction, writing and music — the movie outpaces American comedies about Succeeding in Business, recognizing that the tyranny of commercial media trashes the quality of life itself. Arrow’s informed and insightful Blu-ray extras ask the important question: how can one movie get this complex subject so completely right?

Giants and Toys

Blu-ray

Arrow Video

1958 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 95 min. / Kyojin to gangu, The Build-Up / Street Date May 11, 2021 / 39.95

Starring: Hiroshi Kawaguchi, Hitomi Nozoe, Yunosuke Ito, Kinzo Shin,...

Toshirô Mifune was a Japanese actor, producer and director. He starred in almost 200 movies and TV shows and has a starring role in some of the best movies of all time. His work with director Akira Kurosawa is among the most influential ever created; most Hollywood blockbusters can trace their heritage to films the pair made together.

Related: 10 Best Japanese Shows To Stream On Netflix 

While Mifune is most well-known for his work in samurai films, crime movies such as Stray Dog and The Bad Sleep Well demonstrated that Mifune could use his skills in multiple genres. To celebrate what would have been the actor's 100th birthday, here are his 10 best movies, according to IMDb.

Because “The Bad Sleep Well” had not performed as expected commercially, Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa decided to return to the jidai-geki with what is arguably one of his most popular and most beloved films, “Yojimbo”. At the same time, Kurosawa felt the message of his previous film – a bitter image of the corruption in post-war Japan – would also work as a period film while still having the same impact on the viewer. Stylistically, as Kurosawa later admitted, he was inspired by the works of the film noir, in particular Stuart Heisler’s “The Glass Key”, a crime drama dealing with the links between organized crime and politics, as well as the kind of opportunist characters taking advantage of a corrupt system which can be seen as the foundation of the character played by Toshiro Mifune in “Yojimbo”.

In 1860, during the final years of the Edo period, a...

In 1959, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa was at the height of his success in his home country and had received much international praise for features such as “Rashomon” and the “Seven Samurai”, works which have defined Asian cinema and how it is perceived throughout the world to this day. To have more creative control over his works, a huge step in that direction was the foundation of the Kurosawa Production Company, especially since his projects tended to become increasingly ambitious, even though it was also linked to a huge financial risk. In that regard, it is somewhat surprising Kurosawa would make a feature like “The Bad Sleep Well”, a work inspired by William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, his first film after the foundation of the studio given the film’s very critical view on post-war Japan focusing on how the affiliations of politics and corporations corrode society and democratic principles.

Buy This...

It’s a quality true-life mystery-exposé that doesn’t come off as tabloid trash or Oliver Stone hysteria — the true story of Karen Silkwood is told without cooking the books. The all-superstar cast is something too — Meryl Streep, Cher and Kurt Russell. Only a fine director like Mike Nichols could steer this one into good entertainment & memorable cinema territory.

Silkwood

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1983 / Color B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 131 min. / Street Date July 25, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, Cher, Craig T. Nelson, Diana Scarwid, Fred Ward, Ron Silver, Charles Hallahan.

Cinematography: Miroslav Ondrícek

Production Designer: Patrizia von Brandenstein

Art Direction: Richard D. James

Film Editor: Sam O’Steen

Original Music: Georges Delerue

Written by Alice Arlen and Nora Ephron

Produced by Larry Cano, Michael Hausman, Buzz Hirsch, Mike Nichols

Directed by Mike Nichols

Remember when the big movies about adult themes were in the theaters, and not on cable TV?...

Hiro Murai comes from the world of music videos, which gave him experience in creating stylized visuals. Now, as a key director in television, that background has helped inform his work on shows like FX’s comedy “Atlanta,” which includes surreal moments woven into the narrative, and the trippy Marvel series “Legion.”

“I think you get a really good grasp of the visual language of film,” Murai said of music videos. “The downside is not working with dialogue or actors as much. But you learn how to tell simple stories visually very quickly.”

Read More: ‘Atlanta’: Meet the Secret Weapon Behind FX’s Baffling and Beautiful New Series

Murai moved to the United States from Japan around age nine and learned some of the English language and American cultural cues from watching “The Simpsons.” In middle school, he started shooting small projects on handicam, and by college he landed his first paid gig,...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Film Society of Lincoln Center

The Steadicam series continues with films by Tarantino, PTA, De Palma, Scorsese & more.

The Tampopo restoration is also showing.

Metrograph

Minnelli, Demy, Haynes, and Sirk fill up “Christmas at Metrograph.”

Coraline plays on Christmas Eve.

Museum of the Moving Image

Hugo screens in 3D on Christmas Eve.

Eyes Wide Shut...

The modern movie hero owes a great debt to Toshiro Mifune, the longtime Akira Kurosawa star who provided a ferocious centerpiece to everything from “Seven Samurai” to “Yojimbo.” Steven Okazaki’s documentary “Mifune” chronicles the scope of the actor’s sprawling career as well as his lasting cultural impact. The filmmaker spoke to IndieWire about his interest in Mifune, gathering interviews with filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, and why more people should be appreciating Mifune’s legacy as “the first movie hero who wasn’t a white guy.

Read More: ‘Mifune: The Last Samurai’ Trailer: Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg Sing the Legendary Actor’s Praises

A version of this interview was original published at the Telluride Film Festival, where “Mifune” premiered this fall. The film opens November 25 at the IFC Center in New York with more cities to follow.

When did you first encounter Mifune’s performances?...

Some actors and directors go together like spaghetti and meatballs. They just gel together in a rare way that makes their collaborations special. Here is a list of the seven best parings of director and actor in film history.

7: Tim Burton & Johnny Depp:

Edward Scissorhands; Ed Wood; Sleepy Hollow; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Corpse Bride; Sweeney Todd; Alice in Wonderland; Dark Shadows

Of all the parings on this list, these two make the oddest films. (In a good way.) Tim Burton is one of the most visually imaginative filmmakers of his generation and Johnny Depp was once the polymorphous master of playing a wide variety of eccentric characters. They were a natural combo. Depp made most of his best films with Burton, before his current ‘Jack Sparrow’ period began. The duo had the knack for telling stories about misfits and freaks, yet making them seem sympathetic and likable.

Toronto film epicenter to unleash jam-packed Zulawski and De Palma retrospective series. Alright, Toronto, Get ready to spend those warm summer nights inside, because the Tiff Bell Lightbox’s summer line up is far too good. Alongside special one-off screenings of Jodorowsky’s El Topo (June 11 at 10:15 Pm), Kurosawa’s revenge drama The Bad Sleep Well…

The post Toronto! Tiff Bell Lightbox Announces Zulawski and De Palma Retrospectives appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.