The Sea Is Watching

Couple of short stories written by Akira Kurosawa that blend into each other in Kei Kumai's take on the late master's last screenplay. The setting is a brothel in Edo and the characters are the geisha and their lovers who occupy it and the sea that obsereves them. The film doesn't even come close to being called a Kurosawa masterpiece but it does prove to me that Masatoshi Nagase's  role in the The Hidden Blade was not just an one off.

Rating: * *

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

My grandmother used to tell me that if it rained when the sun was shining, a fox's wedding was happening somewhere. This is the first of Kurosawa's vignette of dreams. Martin Scorsese shows up in one as Vincent Van Gogh. Then there were angels, demons and slowly I too entered my dreamland.

Rating: *

The Bad Sleep Well

I really should not comment on this film. The DVD version that I received from Netflix was not the Cirterion Collection version. It was poorly made and the subtitles were horrendous. To top it off I think the DVD started from the middle of the film. So I missed out on most of the plot and the conversations. But from what I saw it seems to be a very promising Kurosawa film with Mifune playing the lead. So folks if you are going to watch this flick make sure you get the Criterion Collection version.