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- The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945) Denjiro Okochi steals the show in this highly entertaining period film. Okochi plays the leader of a group of samurai who disguise themselves as monks in order to sneak their lord through enemy lines.
- The Most Beautiful (1944) By 1944, it was apparent Japan would lose World War II. Despite facing imminent defeat, Japanese filmmakers were encouraged to make “spiritist” films: movies showing ordinary civilians dedicated to the national cause.
- Sanjuro (1962) A clever and amusing follow-up to Kurosawa’s previous film, Yojimbo (1961). In the original, Toshiro Mifune’s wisecracking samurai pitted two imbecilic gangs against one another to wipe them both out; here, he takes a side, trying to help besieged (rather, naive) people take a stand against their persecutors.
- Scandal (1950) Even lesser Kurosawa films tend to have fascinating components and scenes of tremendous power. Scandal, a critique of yellow journalism in postwar Japan, isn’t quite as searing as its director intended, yet it still has much to offer through its plethora of intriguing characters — most notably a weak-willed lawyer played by that wonderful actor Takashi Shimura.
A ranking of all thirty films directed by Akira Kurosawa, presented in order of best to worst.
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- 20 'Dodes’Ka-Den'
- 19 'I Live in Fear'
- 18 'One Wonderful Sunday'
- 17 'Madadayo'
- 16 'drunken Angel'
- 15 'Stray Dog'
- 14 'The Bad Sleep Well'
- 13 'Sanjuro'
- 12 'The Hidden Fortress'
- 11 'Dreams'
Letterboxd Rating: 3.7/5
There’s a tragic story behind the making of Dodes’ka-den, as it was a box office failure upon release and caused Akira Kurosawa great financial problems that had severe consequences on the filmmaker’s personal life. Thankfully, the director bounced back and though he worked less frequently throughout the 1970s onwards, he still managed to make some very compelling late-career films. And, honestly, Dodes’ka-den can just about be counted among those; if it’s not quite great, then it is at least...
Letterboxd Rating: 3.7/5
Tackling post-World War II fears of atomic war in a psychologically intense way, I Live in Fear is one of Kurosawa’s bleaker movies, more so for how far it goes showing one man’s emotional deterioration more than anything more conventionally disturbing, like on-screen violence. It’s about a man wanting to take his family from Japan to go live in Brazil, as he fears nuclear war destroying the country is imminent. I Live in Fear certainly taps into the uniquely uneasy feeling that many would’ve...
Letterboxd Rating: 3.7/5
Akira Kurosawa was versatile enough that he even tried his hand at the romance genre, as is demonstrated by One Wonderful Sunday, itself one of his earlier and more underrated efforts. It follows an engaged young couple with very different personalities trying to have a pleasant day together despite only having a small amount of money to spend on such a day off: the titular Sunday (duh). One Wonderful Sunday is defined by how grounded it aims to feel, and because the premise is about as simpl...
Letterboxd Rating: 3.8/5
Kurosawa’s final film was Madadayo, and with it, he cemented his legacy as a filmmaker whose directorial career had spanned half a century (given his feature debut was in 1943). It was loosely based on a real person – an author named Hyakken Uchida– and the various events of his life throughout the course of the 20th century, many shown in flashbacks as he looks back on his life from old age. In that way, it’s easy to draw parallels between Hyakken Uchida and Kurosawa himself, who was 83 year...
Letterboxd Rating: 3.9/5
Even though it was released before the yakuza genre truly defined itself and came into being, Drunken Angelfeels like a deconstructive take on that kind of film, being more drama-focused than action-centered. It’s mostly about a doctor treating a young, wounded yakuza member, and trying to dissuade him from continuing to live that kind of lifestyle due to the dangers inherent with it. Drunken Angel is another Kurosawa movie that’s unafraid to move slowly, and one more early film of his that s...
Letterboxd Rating: 3.9/5
Stray Dog is often regarded as the most film noir type of movie that Akira Kurosawa ever made, and that's a fair assessment. It's one of the director's best crime movies (and certainly not his only one), and follows a young detective's desperate attempts to retrieve a stolen pistol, with each step of his journey taking him into progressively darker waters. It milks a great deal of suspense and intrigue from its simple premise, and naturally gets more complex and involved as it goes along. Str...
Letterboxd Rating: 4.0/5
Just over a decade after Stray Dog, Akira Kurosawa returned to the crime genre with The Bad Sleep Well, which is a very loose reimagining or modern update of Shakespeare's Hamlet. It's about an ambitious worker seeking revenge for his father's death, all done by inching his way closer to his boss, who he believes is culpable for the death. It unfolds in quite a methodical and deliberately-paced fashion, but the precise filmmaking by Kurosawa and the performances of its huge cast keep it compe...
Letterboxd Rating: 4.1/5
A sequel to a 1961 movie (more on that later) that's not quite as much of a classic - but is still very good - is Sanjuro. The titular character is a ronin, and in this film, he finds himself allied with a group of warriors who want to eliminate the villainous individuals within their clan. It's a surprisingly funny movie at times, even though it deals with serious themes, deconstructing the samurai mythos while also having a solid amount of gritty sword-fighting action. It's another winning...
Letterboxd Rating: 4.1/5
The Hidden Fortress is a movie that's said to have had quite an influence on American filmmaker/producer George Lucas. It's a samurai/adventure movie that served as one of the influences on Star Wars, with its epic plot being about two peasants unknowingly stumbling into a large-scale conflict when they meet a warrior and princess in hiding. In no way did Lucas plagiarize the film, as there are too many differences, but parts of the narrative and some of the characters are certainly comparabl...
Letterboxd Rating: 4.1/5
Dreams ended up being one of Akira Kurosawa's final films, and it stands out from many of his other films, which tended to be historical dramas, contemporary crime films, or samurai movies. Instead, Dreams is an anthology film, with each sequence being based on various dreams that the famed director had throughout his life. As you might expect, some of these are light-hearted, some are fantastical, and others are quite unsettling. Dreams is a movie packed with unique imagery and a genuinely d...
- Jeremy Urquhart
- Feature Writer/Senior List Writer
- Colin Mccormick
- Seven Samurai (1954) Famously remade as The Magnificent Seven in 1960, the story of a 16th-century Japanese village marauded by violent bandits avenged by seven sword-swinging samurai is deeply ingrained in storytelling mythology.
- Rashomon (1950) Notorious for shifting character perspectives and retelling the same story events from multiple points of view, Rashomon is among Kurosawa's most inventive and oft-imitated masterworks.
- Yojimbo (1961) While Toshiro Mifune would reprise his now-iconic role of Sanjuro one year later, Yojimbo reigns supreme as one of the best Akira Kurosawa movies ever made.
- Ikiru (1952) Ikiru is arguably the most emotionally resonant of the best Akira Kurosawa movies. Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) is a career social worker who is suddenly diagnosed with late-stage cancer, which forces him to take stock of his life, find existential meaning, and press on in the face of unfathomable fear.
Apr 26, 2024 · Sanshiro Sugata (1943) Kurasawa was obsessed with making sure that a film adaptation of the popular novel with the same name, about the hardships that a Judo fighter (Susumu Fujita) goes...
Aug 25, 2022 · The Most Beautiful (1944) Toho Company Ltd. Akira Kurosawa may be known in the west for his brilliant directing of epic films, but in his early days, he begrudgingly worked to support the...
Jul 27, 2022 · His movies, especially the dramas set in modern Japanese society coping with the aftereffects of World War II, are quite aware of the brutalities of the world and the horrors man can cause.
