Takashi Shimura

Takashi Shimura is best remembered for assembling the Seven Samurai (the Yul Brynner role). In fact he made more films with Akira Kurosawa than Toshiro Mifune, and Ikiru is his greatest performance. ... Full Article

kira Kurosawa often referred to Drunken Angel as the movie in which the Japanese director finally found his style, though this minor yet fascinating 1948 work might be more accurately described as the movie in which he found his actor,... ... Full Article

Throughout the film, Kurosawa, photographer Takeo Ito, and art director Takashi Matsuyama play with light and shadow. Characters continually move into one and out of the other, and, as in Sanadas and Matsunagas first scene together, are sometimes bisected by... ... Full Article

What was affecting me? The suspense? No, I'd seen the film before and knew how it ended. The excitement of the fighting? No, it's ineptly choreographed. ... Full Article

When the old-timers talk of monster movies -- not horror films or slasher flicks, but true, creature-feature monster movies -- the discussion doesn't progress very far before the king of all the monsters comes up: Godzilla. ... Full Article

f 1952's Ikiru projects a propitious belief in the individual's ability to affect societal changeand to achieve a measure of emotional and spiritual regeneration in the processthen 1960's The Bad Sleep Well slices such fanciful notions to ribbons with a... ... Full Article