The Sword

Jul 21, 2008 — Akira Kurosawa’s modern adaptation of an American thriller represents a departure from his usual themes and stylistic choices.

May 15, 2019 — The star-studded zom-com has been met with a first round of mildly appreciative reviews.

Oct 10, 2017 — Two singing mermaid sisters take 1980s Poland by storm in this extravagantly mounted musical-horror hybrid.

Aug 20, 2025 — He locked eyes with audiences in films by Pasolini, Soderbergh, Frears, Stephen Elliott, and Edgar Wright.

May 23, 2019 — One family infiltrates another in one of this year’s top critical favorites.

Jul 21, 1998 — Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy, of which this release is the first part, was adapted from Eiji Yoshikawa’s epic novel Musashi Miyamoto, which has been called Japan’s Gone with the Wind. The comparison is valid, for the tale of the medieval...

Nov 30, 2016 — The Lone Wolf and Cub film series has its roots in Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s manga of the same name, which was itself a major influence on Western cartooning and illustration in the 1980s. It felt only natural to...

Nov 4, 2016 — For our edition of the six-part chanbara epic Lone Wolf and Cub, we spoke with the author of the wildly popular manga series on which the films are based.

Maggie Lee is a curator of Asian cinema and chief Asia film critic for Variety. She has contributed as English editor and translator to the Hong Kong Film Archive’s publications, including The Swordsman and His Jiang Hu: Tsui Hark and...

Feb 21, 2024 — Combining the influence of the wuxia genre, the Hong Kong New Wave filmmaking of the 1980s, and loony comic-book futurism, these two ass-kicking fantasias are dazzling showcases of female physicality.