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Yes and yes, but still an excellent film.
Japanese Cinema Recommendations
- Thread starter LangfordBarrow
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im so proud of sherdog today
so many of my beloved films on display, even the bad sleep well (frenchchefs kiss-all toungue )
some bangers that havent been mentioned
Blues Harp
The Bird People in China
departures
somebody mentioned Charisma by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
i cant express how much this movie means to me. it's personal.
but it so quirky
i believe it should be seen, at least once, to have the experience.
also once mentioned but often overlooked is Vital -directed by Tsukamoto and starring Asano. another fantastic movie that is supremely weird. A genius med student works on the cadavar of his one true love
so many of my beloved films on display, even the bad sleep well (frenchchefs kiss-all toungue )
some bangers that havent been mentioned
Blues Harp
The Bird People in China
departures
somebody mentioned Charisma by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
i cant express how much this movie means to me. it's personal.
but it so quirky
i believe it should be seen, at least once, to have the experience.
also once mentioned but often overlooked is Vital -directed by Tsukamoto and starring Asano. another fantastic movie that is supremely weird. A genius med student works on the cadavar of his one true love
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Wasn't Hidden Fortress the inspiration for Star Wars?
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If you like movies from that era they are good. Zatoichi can get a bit repetitive with similar movies.
With Street Fighter if you hate borderline bad guy / bad guy potags you might not like it.
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Twilight Samurai (2002) is a good watch. It has Hiroyuki Sanada as a low ranking samurai as the era of samurai is ending.
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I think so, it's one of my favorites, waiting for my daughter to be old enough to watch it with her.
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Criterion has the collection of the original Zatoichi films but some are better than others. At one point I started buying digital and have a later remake that I thought was pretty good. Here are some Japanese movies I have on digital that I didn't include in my list.
Shin Godzilla '16
Blade of the Immortal '17
The Naked Island '62
Zatoichi '04
13 Assassins '11
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I just noticed I had that one on my watch list when I was buying digital.
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Yep.
To add to what Nizam said, watching the Zatoichi movies is like watching a dramatic series like Law & Order or The Mentalist: If you like the characters and you like the formula, you'll enjoy all the "episodes" with specific "cases." It's what you'd call formulaic but not necessarily in a bad way, just in a descriptive way. And that's why I singled out the novelty installments like when Toshiro Mifune and Wang Yu come through. But even if you don't watch all of them, I'd definitely recommend the first few and the "special guest" ones.
As for Sonny Chiba's Street Fighter films, those are legitimately terrible movies, but they're fun. Bad writing, bad acting. B-movie fare all the way. Chiba is also so cartoonishly over-the-top with his terrible martial arts that it feels at times like he thinks he's in a Kung Pow!-esque spoof and no one told him that they were actually trying to make straight dramatic actioners. But they're iconic and The Street Fighter especially is worth seeing for its twist on the Hong Kong kung fu movie.
Tried to watch Shin Godzilla but had to turn it off after a few minutes since I didn't like the frantic herky jerky way they presented the story with the short clips and unusual zoom aways. It was also one of those movies/shows that didn't really immediately hook you in.
