I think all of Kurosawa's later colour movies are a downgrade from his peak, which was in the early 60s from The Bad Sleep Well to High and Low. It honestly baffles me that people rate Ran so high, which, aside from the visuals and cinematography appreciated as pure sensuality, is inferior in every way. The masterful visuals are in fact quite poorly telling the story, and more often than not don't focus in on anything thematically or dramatically interesting, and move at a boring pace. Just think with what a sure dramatic instinct, and with what energy and speed, Kurosawa used to use the camera. Often the focus on the subject seems wobbly and clumsy, as if it's not even holding the thing in frame properly. Sometimes I question his choice of subject to frame in the first place. Most of the actors are boring and pale before the classic Kurosawa cast getup. The story and characters are a poor variation from the sublimity of King Lear, and no matter how hard I try I cannot ignore that it IS attempting to be an adaptation of King Lear. While Throne of Blood was a perfect adaptation of Macbeth into a popular film form. Kagemusha suffers most of the same problems to a lesser degree and is more entertaining, but the story also drags on and by the time of the ending I felt no emotion (no matter how hard Kurosawa tried). Dersu Uzala was a very nice, simple film but quite an outsider in Kurosawa's filmography. Dodes'ka-den was total dogshit with a garish use of colour that Kurosawa obviously had not mastered yet, and the moralizing element in his films is exaggerated there to a ridiculous degree. Shallow emotional bombast replaces genuine moral concern in all of his colour films (exception of Dersu Uzala). It's like he expects you to be just as invested in the moral themes of these later films, only because he thinks he's doing it the same way he always did it. So he lost the ability for self-criticism, and no doubt going nearly blind didn't help.
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Frick you. Ram was awesome.
/thread
i watch movie because read sucks, i won't read your poem neither
Dreams>Yojimbo>Seven Samurai>......................................................>Sanjuro>...................................................................>everything else
Are they the only Kurosawa films you've seen?
Is Dreams really that good? I haven't seen it.
No, the other stuff is literally unwatchable. All the other samurai movies have shit characters that are interchangeable with each other, and all the hurr durr le poverty bad movies are just autistics screeching in trash.
>No, the other stuff is literally unwatchable.
Sorry anon but either you're moronic and have been filtered or you're just lying about watching his other stuff.
Or you're a dumb zoomer who just discovered "LE VINTAGE KINOGRAPHY".
Haha, why do you hate quality so much? I don't see what you would even like in something like Seven Samurai and not also find and like in High and Low.
>Is Dreams really that good?
dreams is generally considered one of his worst lol
japs hated any kurosawa film that had european/american influence, which was most of his films from the 50s and onward
>dreams is generally considered one of his worst lol
Dumbass.
>Dumbass
don't hate i'm just the messenger
>Letterboxd
worthless hipster review site that's about on par with shit like imdb and rt
Still far better than one homosexual on Cinemaphile
i've never even seen the movie i'm just going by what i've heard about it from the internet
a few morons on Cinemaphile do not count for the majority of the internet
>dreams is generally considered one of his worst lol
We'll that's a lie. Even on Letterboxd it's rated in the upper half of his filmography.
I've seen all of his films and Dreams is easily in the top 5.
>Is Dreams really that good? I haven't seen it.
it's uneven
some stories are great
some are mediocre
Rashomon is one of the greatest most acclaimed classics of world cinema of all time, you really didn't like it??
Did you like Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles lmfao?
Probably didn't just mean by critics.
that was the japanese reaction in the premiere
Plebs filtered
This seems about right. I was just not grabbed by the story.
This book is pretty funny because of how this guy seethes about every single Kurosawa film he wasn't involved with.
What book?
Akira Kurosawa and I (Shinobu Hashimoto)
for me, it's Nora inu
Pretty much all of his early films are top notch kino. Also check out The Quiet Duel and Scandal.
I'll say this for your critique: all the words are in the right place. No one could accuse you of being a chatbot. That's where my positive impression ends. In content terms, without all the fluff and repeating yourself, you wrote "I don't like Ran" Your criticism of Ran is weak, which is a shame because it's not that great, and then you waved a magic wand to transfer that non-criticism to other movies it doesn't apply to. Don't quit your day job.
Criticism is hard. You will never convince someone to dislike something they liked or vice-versa.
True but not an excuse. I provided a blueprint, you let the meaning go first. I'm trying to get something across, not write prettily. Here's my criticism of Ran (haven't seen in 10+ years)
-it's atonal between the lush visuals and the coldness of the characters
-Hidetora is an unsympathetic protagonist and all the soldiers are faceless cannon fodder
-therefore the final crisis is lacking
Pace isn't what makes the visual of Ran uninteresting. It's a lack of emotional content
>Hidetora is an unsympathetic protagonist
Hardly a problem.
>Hidetora is an unsympathetic protagonist
he tried to do what he thought best for his family and people and ended up seeing his sons brutally killed and his land thrown into ruin. i find that easy to sympathize with
Lear is cruel and unforgiving, he recieves what he deserves
i agree while still sympathizing. a man does not have to be a paragon of virtue for me to empathize with him
What a sad midwit. In your attempt to be intellectually rigorous you only make points LESS meaningful, more widely open to interpretation, and LESS original than the repetitive variation of the Op. Which at least hints at genuine observations. A method more affecting INSIGHT than the use of a schema (at least your schema). Op is clearly not an attempt to be 'professional criticism', rather than a simple expression of thoughts on a movie. Which makes your post the most spiteful, mediocre fault-finding imaginable. It can be reimagined in any different context, but your type of criticizing stays the same: randomly highlighting the form or aspect of something and criticizing it according to professional standards, professional standards which in no way require any greater intelligence (if you think for a second how infinitely varied the history of true, worthwhile literary criticism has been from any official standard), especially here since it's in something as trivial as 'film criticism'. Look at a term so dull and unnecessary as 'atonal'; it is the type of word one expects to hear in a youtube essay. It's entirely superfluous and comes from those categories or schemata of criticism, ultimately baseless (because, let's be honest, film critics aren't smart enough to know aesthetical philosophy), but which are used with an officious air under the self-description of 'professional film criticism'.
Your problem is that you cannot think. Any intelligent person would easily be able to THINK about what has been said in the Op, and connect a statement to its associations. But in your mind, seeing no method according to the categories you know, or, rather no outright display of every anterior assumption or systematic conclusion, you do the equivalent of asking for 'proofs' in an argument, you assume there is no method. You are so stupid you only see the bare words you read on a page, like an 80 iq moron with no imagination.
the cinematography is great
I love Ran and will not dignify this nonsense that it's bad with a serious rebuttal.
My tier list :
>GOD TIER :
Rashomon( My first Kurosawa. Really fun with all the different perspectives and shit )
Yojimbo( Just FUN. Really cool characters. The whole situation is hilarious! )
Throne of Blood( Great ending. Dude fricked up so hard. That freaking woman... )
RAN( probably my favorite villain(ess). Love his use of collor in this one. It feel like a Fairy Tale. )
Great tier :
Drunken Angel( Great characters/final fight/probably my favorite moral from a Kurosawa Movie )
High and Low( Great concept, but i find the villain to be slightly disappointing after all that build up )
7 Samurais( I enjoy the build up more than the actual confrontation with the bandits to be honest )
DREAMS( Very entertaining )
Good tier :
Dersu Uzala( Really well made, but it doesn't talk to me in any level. The friendship between the MCs is pretty cute tho. I like the highlights. )
Stray Dog( Probably his only movie i had to force myself to finish. I find the pacing pretty awful, which is strange since i was fine with Kurosawa's pace in everything else in this list. I guess the core idea just didn't aged that well compared to his other movies( That said, it's kinda fun watching how pure/naive people acted back then. I wish i was born during that period. )
Lucas-sama... my friendu
i always find it funny how people rag on lucas for copying kurosawa when kurosawa in turn was copying ford
not like leone copying kurosawa, that was straight plagiarism
Kurosawa was inspired by Ford's style but he never ripped him off. Leone practically stole all of Yojimbo when he remade it as A Fistful of Dollars.
>muh stole
nobody cares
Yes, stole. Fat frick had to pay Kurosawa for it kek.
Simply having a burning building is pretty different from copying an entire script 1:1 and being taken to court because of it
yes that's what i said. lucas was inspired by kurosawa, who in turn was inspired by ford. leone was the one that stole wholesale
for me it's yojimbo
who is this jimbo fella and why is everyone trying to get his attention?
me when i want to get jimbo's attention
seven samurai is pretty boring compared to kinos like rashomon and yojimbo
Yo