The Sword

Oct 24, 2005 — The hero in Masahiro Shinoda’s popular samurai movie is both a genre figure and an ordinary character, both killer and savior, both larger than life and lost in the mists.

Feb 9, 2017 — Repertory PicksStarting tomorrow, New York’s Japan Society will host a weekend-long celebration of actor Meiko Kaji, whose vigorous performances as outlaw women made her one of Japan’s biggest stars in the sixties and seventies. On Saturday, you can see her...

Apr 24, 2015 — Atypical in style and subject, Yasujiro Ozu’s early crime dramas show a future master brilliantly experimenting with camera and editing.

Dec 7, 2010 — In 1981, it seemed to me that a new era of fantastic cinema was upon us.

Oct 24, 2005 — Kihachi Okamoto’s dynamic, intricately madcap movie is a multitoned send-up of samurai film lore.

Jul 25, 2005 — Seijun Suzuki’s drama sees sexuality as a potent anarchic force that, in its implacable selfishness, brushes aside any sort of order or discipline.

Nov 22, 1999 — Breathtaking, fastmoving, and overflowing with a delightfully self-mocking sense of humor, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is one of the most popular and influential Japanese films ever made. Released in 1954, this rip-snorting action-adventure epic about a sixteenth-century farm community led...

Nov 13, 2024 — Spend the holiday season with the Pope of Trash, the Master of Suspense, MTV Productions’s turn-of-the-century thrills, and Columbia Pictures’s pre-Code button-pushers.

May 27, 2025 — Suffused with slapstick humor and slightly surreal wit, Richard Lester’s beloved take on a frequently adapted adventure epic embodies a style of extravagant filmmaking that didn’t survive long past the 1970s.

May 19, 2017 — “Although the word ‘overkill’ can be used to describe practically any of Takashi Miike’s films,” begins Maggie Lee in Variety, “in some ways, the director’s brutal, 2½-hour sword-fight fantasy Blade of the Immortal takes the notion to another level. For...