Half Brothers / Stepbrothers / Ibo kyoudai (1957)

To call Ibo kyoudai a surprise would be one of the great understatements. A powerful mix of the josei-eiga and socio/political commentary, it reflects the life of the nation from WWI to the defeat of WWII through the life of a single family, while giving us two of the most powerful roles in the long …

Death of a Tea Master / Sen no Rikyu: Honkakubo ibun (1989)

Among the many mysteries of Japanese culture, the tea ceremony remains arguably the least comprehensible to outsiders. Though similar rituals began in China and continue to be observed in some form in China and Korea, the Japanese seem to have taken it to an extreme, converting the brewing and drinking of a cup of tea …

Five Men of Edo / Edo gonin otoko (1951)

To call Five Men of Edo a surprise would be an understatement. When I stumbled on a copy, I expected an early fifties return to the traditional chanbara, much like Inagaki's Kojiro Sasaki. After all, it starred Tsumasabura Bando and Utaemon Ichikawa and was directed by one of the grand old men of chanbara films, Daisuke …

Story of a Beloved Wife (1951)

Just as the title says, this is the story of a year in the life of a perfect wife, and just as you would also expect, it is a year that ends in a death scene. The primary interest is that this is an autobiographical movie by Kaneto Shindo about not only his first wife …

Bushido / Bushido zankoku monogatari (1963)

Now and then, what starts out as a star vehicle turns into something much more significant. Such is the case with Bushido, in which Kinnosuke Nakamura gets to satisfy his urge to play multiple characters by taking on eight different roles in the same movie. The result is a long way from the ego trip …

Directors and Their Muses

Every nation’s film history shows some fruitful long-term collaborations of certain actors and directors. John Ford and John Wayne, for example, leap immediately to mind for Americans, or Scorcese and de Niro. When this pairing is linked to a director who also writes, it often produces some of their most personal and often best films …