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More than twenty years after the deaths of director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune, the names remain entwined. For nearly two decades, the pair combined to make some of the best Japanese movies to hit the world stage. And, although Ku...

The original Godzilla (or Gojira, as its die-hard adherents refer to it), released in Japan during 1954, officially ushered in the Japanese movie monster craze that would, in due time, become a subgenre all to itself. When the film reached U.S. shor...

The Hidden Fortress is the third-most influential of Akira Kurosawa's films (behind Rashomon and The Seven Samurai). Unlike many of the great Japanese director's best-known efforts, The Hidden Fortress has not been remade in another language, but ...

Those who know Akira Kurosawa only for his samurai movies (a genre that includes his most famous titles) may be surprised when exposed to the “other side” of his work – less ostentatious films like Red Beard, High and Low, and (most nota...

When it comes to bad movies, King Kong lovers have a plethora of choices but only three merit true consideration: King Kong Escapes, the 1968 Japanese film with a Blofeld-style villain named after Britain’s most beloved Time Lord; King Kong ...

Call it the law of diminishing results. Akira Kurosawa’s 1956 classic The Seven Samurai (the first time this story was made into a movie) is a great film - a contender for one of the best 100 motion pictures of all time. (It’s at #32 on m...

It wouldn't be a stretch to name legendary Japanese film maker Akira Kurosawa as one of the ten greatest motion picture directors of all time. Kurosawa's brilliant work speaks for itself, and, with over five decades of movie making to his credit, ...

For legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, Red Beard represented the end of an era. Not only was it the last film he would make in black-and-white but it represented the end of a 16-film collaboration with Toshiro Mifune. Across the lands...

Long before Keanu Reeves was stuck on board a speeding bus, Jon Voight, Eric Roberts, and Rebecca De Mornay were trapped on a runaway train. And, while there are significant differences between Jan De Bont's Speed and Andrei Konchalovsky's 1985 th...

The most popular cinematic export from Japan is inarguably the samurai movie. Whole books have been devoted to the genre, and more than one mail-order video business has made a tidy profit shipping samurai tapes and DVDs around the world. The mos...