Kurosawa movies

not if you’re familiar with theater or opera?

lol yes. i fat fingered that.

I’ve gotta chime in here to clarify: “Ripped it off” is a weirdly accusatory way to describe the relationship between The Hidden Fortress and Star Wars. George Lucas was heavily inspired by Japanese Samurai films and Akira Kurosawa in general. Many elements of the plot of the original Star Wars is lifted from Hidden Fortress but it’s hardly a ‘rip-off’. George has also never been less than upfront about how big of an influence Kurosawa was on him. Anyway I would probably recommend you watch Seven Samurai first. It’s THE Kurosawa film. It’s been remade or reimagined countless times in film and television. Outside of the actual ‘remakes’, scenes and moments from the film are constantly homaged in other media. You can see the DNA of Seven Samurai in films like Ocean’s Eleven, LOTR The Two Towers, A Bug’s Life, and of course Star Wars. Just to give an example of how widely it’s referenced, if you’ve seen Mad Max Fury Road you might recall a scene where Max and the other protagonists are stuck in some thick fog and realise there’s a small band of villains almost upon them. Max heads off alone into the fog to deal with them, and the camera stays with the rest of the group as they wait anxiously. After a short while Max returns out of the fog, clearly having beaten the villains. This scene is almost a cliche in many ways, but this scene and every similar scene like it which you might have seen, is basically a direct homage to a similar scene in Seven Samurai. And that’s just one example of the kind of widespread influence the film has had.

I am currently doing this with Ozu at my Temple in NYC. One film a month. We just watched Good Morning last week

HBO Max or Criterion Channel

HBO Max has a pretty good Kurosawa collection, including Yojimbo