Seven Samurai: there may be a few films which are as good as Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, but not one that is better. It’s a very simple story (often replicated; sometimes well, more often than not badly), but one that is given a lot of time to breathe and develop, allowing the world to become more detailed, the characters and their relationships richer, deeper. The cast is great: Takashi Shimura is pure dignity as the anchor, as is Seiji Miyaguchi; Isao Kimura has a trickier role and pulls it off nicely. Toshirô Mifune is on a completely different key, animalistic and savage, but also very entertaining in his buffoonery. Production values are beautiful, from Sô Matsuyama’s art direction, Kôhei Ezaki and Mieko Yamaguchi’s costume to
Fumio Hayasaka’s musical score. Asakazu Nakai’s camerawork is absolutely top-notch: frames are beautiful, well-constructed and dynamic. They show war as something ugly, chaotic, dirty, no mater how exciting to watch.

Read what I wrote before: Seven Samurai