This week I spent a lot of time watching movies, mainly cause I realized I could just watch movies while doing what I usually do, and Beck watched a few with me which increased my motivation.
This week I accidentally ended up watching a lot of Kobayashi Masaki. I started this week wanting to watch The Human Condition trilogy, and I managed to do that over three nights. The final one, A Soldier's Prayer, was easily the best and a 5/5, but the other two were pretty close, with the first movie being my second favorite. On the day back from Grandma and Grandpa camp Beck showed Jacks and I Harakiri, which was amazing and a 5/5 for me. The last one I watched while painting miniatures, which was Kwaidan, a movie that is from the Japanese book by the same name which is a collection of ghost stories (that's what Kwaidan means, although it's called Kwaidan because that's how it would have been pronounced in Japan at the time of publication, 1906, but westernization removed the kw sound and made it just a k for easier pronunciation, a fun bit of Hepburn romanization, so Kaidan is a ghost story). It was pretty good overall and the stories were all nice. The final one has no ending because you are supposed to assume what happens and the way they showed that was really cool. Overall Kobayashi has had amazing movies, I still have three more by him on my watch list that I'll watch eventually.
Obviously I had to watch a lot of Kurosawa, and indeed I watched a bit. I watched Sanshiro Sugata pt. ii, which was pretty mid. Sanjuro was amazing and I actually liked it more than the first, Yojimbo, but I still love Yojimbo for its extremely massive influence on the whole western cowboy film genre. A film that was only an hour, The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail, was a great movie, and I mainly loved the historical significance of it. It was about Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who ended the civil war in Japan at the time, and his brother got jealous and was out to kill him, so Yoshitsune and his loyal followers. The movie was specifically about a legend where they needed to pass through a barrier to go to a hiding place and pretended to be monks. Part of their trickery when they were almost caugth was Musashibo Benkei (a real samurai with many legends about how amazing he was, easily one of my favorite samurais) ended up beating Yoshitsune with a stick pretending he was a bad corrier, which fooled them because a loyal follower would never beat their leader. It worked and they were able to pass through, and overall a really cool movie about a legend that's been adapted into plays before about the samurai who ended the civil war in Japan. I also watched The Lower Depths, which was overall really great but easily my favorite part is done twice throughout the movie, but is best done in the end is a song they have about gambling and how you will pay for it, it's really upbeat and they're all crazy. It's mainly done best in the end because it shows how little they care (they're a poor family who just dealt with a lot of drama) and someone yells and informs them that they grandma hung himself and one of the characters says "He picked a bad time to die." and they continue their weird song. I watched The Bad Sleep Well, a Japanese adaptation of Hamlet, that was done really well but ended very different to the Shakespeare play. The last new movie I watched was Red Beard, which was about doctors and residency and overall I liked it a lot, especially the character Mifune Toshiro played. I also rewatched Seven Samurai, easily the best Samurai movie in my opinion, which is difficult given Kurosawa's Ran was a masterpiece. While watching it again though I realized I've had a bit of a samurai craze this week, and just overall.
Of other random movies I watched one was Sword of Doom, a cool samurai movie that had some pretty cool practical effects, my favorite being a scene where he cut someone's hand off and they showed it, and for 1966 it was all practical. It also had Mifune Toshiro who I love and another very popular Japanese actor I got to see a lot of this week, Nakadai Tatsuya, who played really well as the lead in The Human Condition I-III. I have now realized I for sure am addicted to Kurosawa, but also a lot to samurai movies. Other than that I watched 10 Things I Hate About You with Beck and Cailey, one of her favorites that I've seen a few times, it's a modern American take on Taming of the Shrew. I finally watched It's a Wonderful Life, which was amazing and not at all what I expected when the only thing I knew was "Christmas movie" lol. I watched the first Bill and Ted which was fun. I rewatched House 1977 with Cailey, she gave it a 3/5, me a 5/5 again, but I'll take a 3/5 given the film. She found it very strange, which it is, but still fun. Finally, Cailey loves The Martian, but I've never seen it, so she had me watch it, and it was pretty good, a 4/5 for me.
This next week I hope to and plan to finish Kurosawa finally and very sadly, but I'm excited because that means I'll end it with rewatching what got me into his films, my favorite actor and old films overall, Ikiru. This means I'll watch (from Kurosawa) The Hidden Fortress (probably with Beck), Dersou Uzala, Dodes 'ka-den, Rhapsody in August, The Quiet Duel and The Most Beautiful. I want to watch Princess Kaguya, Hard Boiled, Samurai Rebellion, Do the Right Thing, Ringu, Modern Times, Titanic and Lady Snowblood (which is what inspired the Kill Bill series) this week.
This week I created a new list to track the favorite movies of those who I ask/am close to. I rank all the ones I've watched and the others are at the bottom of the list for me to watch. I want to try and watch at least one person's favorite film a week, and will decide that soon and start that this week. Technically Cailey has my favorite of the favorites, but I included my own top four in the list and she shares one with me. Excluding mine, Dad is the top with Back to the Future.
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