Is there a single director from Japan that stacks up against Kurosawa? I feel like they all just gave up after him. That goes for their animated films too.
Japanese Directors
Is there a single director from Japan that stacks up against Kurosawa? I feel like they all just gave up after him. That goes for their animated films too.
Ozu
Ozu made family dramas, not action films like Kurosawa so he has less instant mass appeal to normies
Ozu and Mizoguchi form with him the great trinity of Japanese cinema. Kurosawa is probably still the greatest but he is also the most foreign (non-Japanese) in style and sometimes wavered in his standards just for entertainment.
However I love Kitano as well. Extremely kino director, one of my favourites.
Could you recommend me a movie from Ozu and one from Mizoguchi, please.
AFAIK they made less great movies than Kurosawa but Sansho the Bailiff and Tokyo Story. They're literally their respective directors most famous movies but they deserve it.
There's also Kinugasa. He has two famous films, the silent A Page of Madness and the 50s Gate of Hell, I recommend both. He's not on the level of the aforementioned three but still a great director.
Thank you.
An Autumn Afternoon is more famous than Tokyo Story.
Film school still teaches about that teapot.
Early Summer from Ozu
Sansho the Bailiff from Mizoguchi
>Kitano
watching brother in a bit, looks pretty good. i had no idea the guy from takeshi's castle was an actual kino director lmao
Brother isn't bad but it was his only American production which troubled the production and made things a little janky because of the language/cultural shift. All of his movies before it are fantastic
where from
Kurosawa occupied a weird no man's land of cinema. His movies were overlooked in his country for being too western, but he was overlooked by The US for being too foreign.
>His movies were overlooked in his country for being too western
Where does this meme come from? Seven Samurai was like the most or second most viewed film in cinemas in Japan when it first came out.
He literally tried to kill himself when his film flopped in Japan.
>Seven Samurai was like the most or second most viewed film in cinemas in Japan when it first came out.
Overlooked by critics I should say. Now his films are considered WORLD CINEMA CLASSICS, but at the time? not so much.
Western cope by trying to pretend only they can appreciate art. Kurosawa was always popular.
>he was overlooked by The US for being too foreign
He was literally the only foreigner that wasn't overlooked.
By remaking seven samurai from scratch?
He was so overlooked in america that it took the power of two directors with huge clout to get him funding because no one else cared.
Holy kino.
>George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola are credited at the end of the film as executive producers in the international version. This is because they persuaded 20th Century Fox to make up a shortfall in the film's budget when the original producers, Toho Studios, could not afford to complete the film. In return, 20th Century Fox received the international distribution rights to the film. Coppola and Kurosawa appeared together in Suntory whisky commercials to raise money for the production.
Oshima
Harakiri is the only Masaki Kobayashi film I've ever seen but it easily stacks up with any of the Kurosawa movies I've seen
kobayashi also made kwaidan which is better than kurosawa's dreams
Nice, now I gotta check it out
>kobayashi also made kwaidan which is better than kurosawa's dreams
Agreed bud the dream sequence in Kagemusha mogs Kwaidan.
>hasn't seen The Human Condition
Don't be put off by the runtime, it isn't remotely boring and it's in 3 (really 6) parts.
I've heard of it before now that you reminded me of it and that the Harakiri guy directed it, maybe I'll put it higher on my queue of films to watch
The 60s were a golden period for japanese cinema, if you only watch kurosawa you will miss out, there are tonnes of good films by directors like shohei imamura, kaneto shindo, these two especially experiment a lot. Kaneto shindo made the naked island which is a particularly good silent film, he also made onibaba which is also very nice folk horror. I'd recommend you just watch any japanes film made in the 60s.
I will look into it. I've only watched Kurosawa's samurai movies, was pleasantly surprise how good and still watchable they are.
onibaba was fun. reminded me to name drop House (1977)
5 or 6. Kurosawa was likely the most consistently painterly and the most influential in Western cinema with Ozu being the runner-up
Hideo Kojima
Kurosawa isn't the end-all be-all of japanese film like plebs seem to think.
he's no kurosawa, but takashi miike gets an honorable mention, at the very least
I watched Ugetsu and thought it was good, but not some totally amazing masterpiece everyone says it is. Am I just stupid or something
Mizoguchi is praised more for his cinematic style (which you learn to identify from watching more of his movies) than for profound or stunningly beautiful shots, though there plent of those too.
Mizoguchi made female tragedies. Pretty weird for a man to dedicate almost all his films to women. Some of the best female sob stories ever put on film.
Male directors that can tell those stories are pretty great. I've been on a Pedro Almodovar binge and the female-led films are just as good or better than his male-centric films.
Check out Naruse, he does the same thing. IIRC he adapted almost all of his movies from female novelists who had input on the scripts. Amazing work
Anon, I'm half an hour into 'When a Woman Ascends the Stairs'. Only stopped to say that I'm loving it and you probably just turned me onto a new director. Thanks
Glad to hear it, he’s one of my favorites.
Do you by chance have any other film recommendations, either by Naruse or another foreign director?
Am I the only one that doesn't really rate Yojimbo? I actually prefer Clint's version.
Suzuki.
Very likely enjoyed by/influential to NWR
Tarantino also
You just like his cinematographer, Shigeyoshi Mine. Try watching a Suzuki movie without his influence and let me know what you think.
Shuji Tereyama
Throw Away Your Books was cool but I couldn't sit through Pastoral, too artsy fartsy for me
For me, it's Unagi.
takeshi kitano
Both Kurosawas are great.
I always forget this guy made more than just Cure and Pulse
His best friend. He would agree.
No, because Japanese cinema is extremely limited, from a cultural point of view. They samurai movies, geisha films, and world war 2 flicks. That's about it. And Kurosawa pretty much summed up all of the former 2 with his filmography, while nobody cares about Japan's perspective in World War 2.
There are none
That are as good as him? Probably not.
But Kobayashi, Teshigahara, and Naruse are three that, in my opinion, come somewhat close. Ozu too but I’ve never been super fond of him
Who is the Kurosawa of horror film?
I wanna say it's Kurosawa.
Japanese horror film? Probably Shindo since he did Kuroneko and Onibaba.
Horror in general?
Carpenter managed to do a bunch of wildly different horror films (The Thing, Halloween, The Fog) that were successful, influential and well-remembered even though I don’t love his aesthetic. James Whale is the OG horror director. Mario Bava is the best slasher director and basically invented the killer cam. Impossible to say, really.
Japanese film specifically. Will definitely look into Shindo. Onibaba alone looks great.
You can also view kobayashi's kwaidan as a sort of horror storie anthology but told in a folk kind of way
Just what the doctor ordered. Horror films that take a folkloric turn are what I've been needing. Will definitely jump on this one.
Loved Cure, hasn't seen Pulse yet.
Can't say no to good body horror either.
For modern horror, you need to look at kiyoshi kurosawa's cure and pulse/kairo
Tsukamoto is somewhat of a horror director but his stuff is more punkish body horror and probably not what you’re looking for. Horror junkies would put him up there though
Watch 1971 Shura/Demons, one of the best samurai horror that I've ever seen
The guy that directed Godzilla mogged Kuroawa in every way possible.
Kurosawa and Honda were actually best friends their whole lives and Honda co-directed Kurosawa's last five films. A few famous sequences were directed just by him mostly outdoors. They complimented each other perfectly.
https://twitter.com/js_film_nyc/status/1258387389384450048?lang=de
Also, somehow, for some reason, the best ever book about a Japanese filmmaker and Japanese film industry in general isn't about Kurosawa but Honda.
What book?
This.
https://www.amazon.com/Ishiro-Honda-Life-Godzilla-Kurosawa/dp/0819570877
For some reason I can't post images right now.
I like Anno's direction. Liked Shin Godzilla. Liked Shin Kamen Rider. Wish he did more live action, honestly.
Body Hammer sucked, but Iron Man was cool.
Very Cronenberg inspired. Felt like the director watched Videodrome and said, "I want to do even more".
I see no one has name dropped Honda yet.
Takeshi Kitano and Ozu are probably the only ones. I like Shinya Tsukamato a lot but he objectively does not qualify.
Tsukamoto, Kitano and Sono are the best jap directors still working today
Hamaguchi is great imo, I think he could make the short list. Happy Hour was very good. His only issue is that his films are a little bloated
RIP Sono he was metoo’d in Japan which is pretty hard to pull off. Not too surprised considering the content of his movies though.
Sauce?
>japanese directors are based
>japanese actors are over acting retards
such a shame
Recent j-horror thing that looks promising, haven't watched it yet though
Fukasaku is worth mentioning. Only about half as talented as Kurosawa but was similar in the range of his filmography.
Battle Royale might have surpassed Seven Samurai in being the most well known Japanese film.
There're plenty of good ones. None do big budget epics like Kurosawa did but there are countless extremely high quality directors from Japan.
The big obvious ones are Kitano (hit and miss, his 90s stuff is fantastic) and Koreeda (Almost 100% consistently great).
I will say avoid Sion Sono. He is very popular around these parts because of his "lol so wacky" style and his films have a pervert theme to them. But he's one of the worst living directors on the planet.
The other one that's pretty popular and quite bad and bound to be recommended by people here is Takashi Miike - he mostly does anime adaptation nonsense on extremely low budgets full of atrocious CGI violence.
His film Audition though is very good and worth a watch, though i think it was an accident because nothing else he's done has been that good.
His Battles Without Honor series of films are required viewing for anyone interested in Yakuza stuff.
If you think Visitor Q or Gozu is bad I don’t know what to tell you. I can understand disliking the edgy/sillier stuff, but they’re solid films
Audition was from a book and not Miike's original idea, that's why
Miike, like most directors, works with a lot of screenwriters
it's literally impossible to make a film like this again at this scale, let alone from the japanese. they just forgot how to make kino.
The Human Condition trilogy can stand with the best worldwide.
Tokusatsu and anime ruined Japanese cinema
The hard times have only just begun.
*Staring at sword in ground*
Kobayashi is better than Kurosawa
Fuck that commie.
you're gay
>directs himself as the lead, mumbles a few words, and stares at you while smirking
thank you based Kitano
May I introduce you to Takashi Mike?
>Ichi the Killer
>13 Assassins
>Audition
>Hara-Kiri (remake)
First love kind of sucked and was very forgettable. Love Exposure by Sono was far more compelling.
Overrated bore
No. Picrel. The best film ever made.
The 70s was a great time for cool jap action stuff
>Battles Without Honor and Humanity
>Lone Wolf and Cub/Shogun Assassin
>Street Fighter
>Lady Snowblood
>Female Prisoner Scorpion
etc
Actually watching Lady Snowblood and reading the comic murdered Kill Bill for me.
It felt like Tarantino just failed totally to live up to his inspirations.
I got the same thing after watching The Great Silence and then rewatching Hateful 8.
why are 90% of Jappanese movies made after 2000 either SoL(like Little Forest), anime or Romance? where's the yakuza samurai hyperviolent kino?
You never heard of itchy the killer and other hyperviolent kinos by Takahashi Mike?
Miike, Kitano and Sion are the only guys still making these though? take a look at this list;
https://letterboxd.com/8432910/list/japan-1990-2023/
At his peak Miike would put out like four or five movies per year though
Gozu
For some reason Japan has been cleaning its act pretty hard in the past 20 years, trying to look family friendly. Don't know why
They had some high profile crimes in the 80s/90s, including some pedo/child serial killer who was apparently really into violent movies and manga. I'd imagine a lot of that stuff got toned down because of moral panic
I doubt they give a shit anon. Some cunt who killed a French woman and ate part of her fled to Japan and never got shipped back for a trial and became a celebrity.
I think it's because the reality of the lost decade really set in after the 2000s. The good times were well and truly owari da. America was about to embark on its ill-fated wars against terrorism in the Middle East, China was getting stronger day by day, and as the new millennium came and went with no sign that the economy would ever recover to its highs in the 70s and 80s, there was not even the faintest sliver of hope that the cyberpunk Japan Inc future that so many predicted would happen by now would ever be realized, so the nation's culture retreated into comforting escapism, because there wasn't any spirit left to handle both the cruelty of reality and see cruelty reflected in the media they consumed. And the same thing is happening to America with the rise of the soiboi capeshit consoomer, the "Disney adults" and Swifties, etc
Daisuke Nishio
I heard Japanese horrors, b movies have some insane direction but 99% of them are not translated in English and hard to find
I don't know. They seen weird
Eh from my experience even obscure Japanese stuff can be found with good eng subs because of how many weebs there are in the west. Tetsuo the Iron Man and Evil Dead Trap 1 and 2 are a good starting point for weird nipponese shit
>me when playing elden ring
>Is there a single director from Japan that stacks up against Kurosawa?
Hirokazu Kore Eda & Naomi Kawase
Teshigahara.
Are the Samurai movies about Musashi worth watching?
The top Nihonkino appreciator has you covered
>find rashomon and seven samurai to be plodding mediocre pieces of shit
>but consider ran, red beard, ikiru and high and low is some of the greatest cinema ever
this vexes me
some times you like some things and some times you don't like some things
Kore-eda is the best these days.
Shoplifters is primo shit.