Genre: Foreign Movies
Writing on cinema from beyond the English-speaking world — the films, traditions, and voices that tell their stories in other tongues.
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Sword of the Beast (1965)
Hideo Gosha's 1965 second film. Fugitive samurai on the run. The genre's anti-feudal voice. Criterion-canonical. -
Three Outlaw Samurai (1964)
Hideo Gosha's 1964 directorial debut. Three masterless samurai aid peasant uprising. Spin-off from TV series. Stark and brutal. -
The Twilight Samurai (2002)
Yoji Yamada's 2002 late-Edo samurai drama. Hiroyuki Sanada as widowed petty officer. Domestic samurai life. Academy Award nominee. -
Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (1972)
Kenji Misumi's 1972 first Lone Wolf film. Itto Ogami and infant son Daigoro on the assassin road. Six-film series template. -
The Sword of Doom (1966)
Kihachi Okamoto's 1966 nihilist samurai film. Tatsuya Nakadai as soulless killer. Adapted novel never finished. Abrupt ending. -
The Hidden Fortress (1958)
Kurosawa's 1958 medieval adventure. Mifune as general, two bumbling peasants. Lucas cited as Star Wars influence. -
Sanjuro (1962)
Kurosawa's 1962 Yojimbo sequel. Mifune returns as the ronin. The final-fountain-of-blood draw became foundational anime image. -
In the Mood for Love (2000)
Wong Kar-wai's 2000 1960s Hong Kong romance. Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung. Unfulfilled longing. Cheongsam parade. Slow motion. -
Le Trou (1960)
Jacques Becker's 1960 French prison drama. Five inmates plan escape from La Sante. Real-time digging sequences. Becker's final film. -
Rififi (1955)
Jules Dassin's 1955 French heist. Thirty-two-minute silent jewelry heist sequence. Template for every heist procedural since.