8.4Seven Samurai
Seven Samurai
A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people ...
8.3Ikiru
Ikiru
Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
8.3High and Low
High and Low
A shoe company executive who has mortgaged everything he has becomes a victim of extortion when his chauffeur's son is kidnapped and is conflicted over whether he should pay the ransom.
8.1Yojimbo
Yojimbo
A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name ...
8.1Rashomon
Rashomon
Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, "Rashomon" is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of justice. Through an ingenious use of ...
8.1Red Beard
Red Beard
Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the ...
8.0Ran
Ran
With Ran, legendary director Akira Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare's King Lear as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan. Majestic in scope, the film is Kurosawa's ...
8.0Dersu Uzala
Dersu Uzala
A military explorer meets and befriends a Goldi man in Russia’s unmapped forests. A deep and abiding bond evolves between the two men, one civilized in the usual sense, the other at ...
8The Hidden Fortress
The Hidden Fortress
Japanese peasants Matashichi and Tahei try and fail to make a profit from a tribal war. They find a man and woman whom they believe are simple tribe members hiding in a fortress. ...
7.9Throne of Blood
Throne of Blood
Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, ...
7.9Sanjuro
Sanjuro
Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Kurosawa's tightly paced, beautifully composed "Sanjuro." In this companion piece and sequel to "Yojimbo," jaded samurai ...
7.8Kagemusha
Kagemusha
Akira Kurosawa's lauded feudal epic presents the tale of a petty thief who is recruited to impersonate Shingen, an aging warlord, in order to avoid attacks by competing clans. When ...
7.7The Bad Sleep Well
The Bad Sleep Well
In this loose adaptation of "Hamlet," illegitimate son Kôichi Nishi climbs to a high position within a Japanese corporation and marries the crippled daughter of company vice president ...
7.6Drunken Angel
Drunken Angel
Doctor Sanada treats gangster Matsunaga after he is wounded in a gunfight, and discovers that he is suffering from tuberculosis. Sanada tries to convince Matsunaga to stay for ...
7.6Dreams
Dreams
A collection of magical tales based upon the actual dreams of director Akira Kurosawa.
7.4Madadayo
Madadayo
Based on the life of Hyakken Uchida, a Japanese author and academic. The film opens with Uchida resigning his job as a German professor at the onset of WWII. The story is told mostly in ...
7.1Rhapsody in August
Rhapsody in August
The story centers on an elderly hibakusha, whose husband was one of 80,000 human beings killed in the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, caring for her four grandchildren over the summer. ...
6.8No Regrets for Our Youth
No Regrets for Our Youth
Yukie, the well-bred daughter of a university professor, is shocked when her father is relieved of his post for his political teachings during a purge of anti-militarism in pre-war ...
6.5Sanshiro Sugata
Sanshiro Sugata
The story of Sanshiro, a strong stubborn youth, who travels into the city in order to learn Jujutsu. However, upon his arrival he discovers a new form of self-defence: Judo. The main ...
6.2Sanshiro Sugata Part Two
Sanshiro Sugata Part Two
In this government-suggested sequel, Sugata again grows as a judo master, and demonstrates his (and by extension, all Japanese) superiority to the foreign warrior.