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Akira Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies (2015)
- ArtWomb 6y agoKurosawa-san may be too humble to add his own Ikiru (生きる, "To Live") to this list. But it well deserves its place in the pantheon. A film to restore your faith in the simple act of surviving ;)
- nanna 6y agoI completely agree! Ikiru had a huge effect on me, and I've never been able to forget Takashi Shimura's facial expressions from it.
- hkmurakami 6y agoA bit OT, but this reminded me of the story behind the “catch copy” by Shigesato Itoi [1] for Mononoke Hime, 「生きろ」 https://ghibli.jpn.org/report/mononoke-9/ https://ghibli.jpn.org/report/mononoke-9/ (Used prominently in their marketing material including posters) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigesato_Itoi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigesato_Itoi
- tootie 6y agoThere's a whole bunch of his films I'd put squarely in my all-time list. Ikiru, Ran, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, High and Low, Dersu Uzala, Rashomon. It's one masterpiece after another. Try watching Seven Samurai and Ikiru back to back to really appreciate the genius of Takeshi Shimura as an actor.
- autarch 6y agoAnyone setting out to watch this should be warned that they will cry like a little baby. At least I did.
- notsureaboutpg 6y agoHis "Ran" is one of my favorite movies (top ten)
- DubiousPusher 6y agoInteresting list. This author's incredulous introduction is most unwelcome. If you want to make a list go for it friend but this is someone else's list. If you want a perfectly ordered prestige fest there's AFI, IMDB and many other places you can find that. Personally, I'd have no problem watching Barry Lindon over Clockwork any day of the week. And of course there's no Ozu on there. The two had a long standing beef. Kurosawa was proud as f**. Even if "Floating Weeds" is a work of pure melodramatic genius in which every shot is perfect, it's not making a list by Kurosawa.
- dfxm12 6y agoCheck the list again: 27. Banshun [Late Spring] (Ozu, 1949) Japan
- DubiousPusher 6y agoNo shit! I guess all Ozu was not too bland for Kurosawa's taste. Really beautifully shot movie too but I guess all Ozu is.
- kinghtown 6y agoI actually find his colour films to be incredibly charming. Really Tokyo Story is the only green tea on rice film of his. still excellent but one could be in for bit of a surprise if they only watched that by Ozu.
- DubiousPusher 6y agoYes, my first Ozu was Floating Weeds and it has remained my favorite because of the heartfelt drama and the vibrant beauty of the color photography. Not bland at all of course.
- kinghtown 6y agoA great pick BTW by Kurosawa.
- 6y ago
- ahartmetz 6y agoI see a Mabuse movie on position three, and for the purposes of fun and entertainment, I would like to recommend to watch "Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse" instead. Due to the later time of its release, it wasn't as influential, but it's a really good movie and it works better for watchers (such as myself) used to modern stylistic conventions in movies.
- afkqs 6y agoI wanted to start watching more classic movies recently as I realised that beside Chaplin's, I've seen very few movies made prior to the 1960s. I've found the main streaming platforms to have very little choice when it comes to these. Where would you recommend watching these old classic movies listed here?
- conjectures 6y agoI know BFI does a streaming service, can't vouch for the historical distribution but it's certainly this sort of stuff.
- peruvian 6y agoIf in the US, HBO Max and the Criterion Channel will get you most of the way there. HBO Max has a portion of Criterion's canon plus a lot of Turner Classic Movies (American movies 1930s-50s). I'm the reverse of you - 90% of the time I watch films made before the 1960s, and these two services have a bunch of what I watch. Still gotta torrent or rent from iTunes every now and then though.
- DarkCrusader2 6y agoCriterion is the best place to get "important classic and contemporary films" if it is available in your region. I am also hearing a lot of good things about Mubi these days though I have not tried it personally. I don't have Criterion available in my region nor can I find DVD/blurays anywhere so sailing the high seas is the only option for me.
- jnichols35 6y agoIf you're in the US, might be worth checking out Kanopy[0]. It requires a library card, and a participating library. I haven't been able to use it as Brooklyn and NYC don't seem to be participating, so it might in fact be terrible. [0]https://www.kanopy.com/ https://www.kanopy.com/
- brudgers 6y agoI think Kanopy is pretty good, but it's the only streaming service I use regularly...other than YouTube. Last I checked, Monterey Public Library has Kanopy and anyone who lives in California can get a card there.
- solarhoma 6y agoIt is interesting seeing how many German films made the list prior to 1939. Then Germany didn’t make the list again until the 80’s. I didn’t realize how good their film scene was pre-war.
- mixmastamyk 6y agoWe recently saw the restored Metropolis for the first time, was intriguing.
- solarhoma 6y agoI added it to the queue. Thanks for the rec! Also, this was the 2010 version?
- mixmastamyk 6y agoI think so. It said it had new footage found in Argentina. Just a few years old, I believe.
- solarhoma 6y agoYes, that is the one!
- d13 6y agoPerhaps because most of the German film Industry had migrated to Hollywood by then
- solarhoma 6y agoMaybe, but you would think Germany wouldn’t make the list again afterwards after losing talent/knowledge. So, it could also be showing the affect of a war torn country split East and West and how long it took to regain the population to support film.
- Majestic121 6y agoAn interesting website based on this concept is https://www.lacinetek.com/ https://www.lacinetek.com/ : it's a website gathering recommendations from famous directors (including Kurosawa), and offering to rent the movies for streaming. It includes mainly classic and high quality movies, and while it's a bit pricey compared to Netflix, I've yet to be disappointed by a selection. Picking a movie from there is the equivalent of eating in a nice restaurant : probably not something you'd do everyday, but definitely worth it once in a while.
- dfxm12 6y agoWhen you look at the selection criteria, it's hard to accept this as Kurosawa's favorite movies. Based on the handful of films I've seen on this list, though, this is probably a list of films you should go out of your way to see if you're into film for something more than just for entertainment. Some are just flat out entertaining for anyone though, with the drama of Witness, the comedy of The Thin Man or the wonder of My Neighbor Totoro. Some show off the technical prowess of the director, like Barry Lindon. Some have stood the test of time as a work of art like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Of course, I guess the point is that great movies hit many of these categories.
- paganel 6y agoI also highly recommend The Thin Man, we've (me and my SO) just seen it last week and it was a breath of fresh air among all the gloomy news surrounding us.
- JKCalhoun 6y agoAgree. From the older films listed, Stella Dallas is sweet, The Bicycle Thieves is engaging, La Strada will make you fall in love with Fellini's wife....
- inasio 6y agoAgreed! The books with the thin man(by Dashiell Hammett) are also very good.
- dfxm12 6y agoWaiter, will you serve the nuts... I mean, will you serve the guests the nuts? Is one of my favorite lines :)
- ghaff 6y agoSome of the sequels aren't bad either although the original is definitely the best. William Powell and Myrna Loy can lift up a lot of material even if it's just so-so.
- nsajko 6y ago
- kmnc 6y agoFilm has such a huge library of "great movies", I have over 700 films logged on letterboxd, with a pretty decent spread of years/countries and I would say I still know basically nothing about film. I can fire up Criterion Channel or MUBI and watch brilliant movies no one ever talks about. It is a real shame Criterion Channel isn't more popular...if you like movies you are doing a disservice to yourself not picking it up. If only Netflix embraced the library style dream instead of shilling their own over produced crap. Great to see Fitzcaraldo on here, a film that usually gets talked a lot about, or you see a lot of "Watch the documentary, it is better", but rarely gets the praise it deserves as film itself. Knowing nothing about this film, and watching it for the fist time was an amazing and unforgettable experience. Also great to see Last Year at Marienbad on here, for which Robbe-Grillet wrote the entire thing but rarely gets credited. If you like Last Year check out some of Robbe-Grillet's other films...not for everyone, but among my most favorite. His "The Erotic Dream Machine: Interviews with Alain Robbe-Grillet" offers some of the greatest insights about film and film as art.
- gh-throw 6y ago> Film has such a huge library of "great movies", I have over 700 films logged on letterboxd, with a pretty decent spread of years/countries and I would say I still know basically nothing about film. Film is so full of great stuff that there exists a reasonably-curated meta best-of-list of 1,000 great ones... with an overflow list of the next 1,000 that's also almost all excellent, and those still aren't a comprehensive list of all the films worth watching. https://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000.htm https://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000.htm (Possibly NSFW because of screen-caps from movies)
- JKCalhoun 6y agoYea, I started with the "AFI Top 100 Films" and went through all of those (spoiler, you've likely already seen many of them if you are even slightly into movies). Definitely focuses on American films (surprise!). After that I have begun the "1001 Films To See Before You Die." I suspect I'll be finishing that up in about 3 years (need to hang on that much longer!). Most if not all of the AFI Top 100 Films are in the 1001. Also, again, some of the 901 remaining films you may also have seen already. But the 1001 have a lot more French New Wave, Italian Neorealist, and generally a more cosmopolitan mix. To be sure though the list skews Western. I'm happy to have another list of films. The set of Kurosawa's favorite films, of course, intersects with the above two lists but appears to add, unsurprisingly, a lot more Japanese films. Somehow I had to smile just imagining Kurosawa watching "One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest". Does that film even make sense for someone growing up within Japanese culture?
- Causality1 6y agoI am also struck by the list’s most glaring, and curious, omission. There’s no Orson Welles Why is it that the deeper someone gets into a field/hobby the less accepting they are of other people having different tastes? You're not beholden to anyone for your preferences. You're allowed to like or dislike anything for any reason, even something as silly as the way someone pronounces a word or maybe the director's face reminds you of your high school bully.
- scarecrowbob 6y agoAlso, The Third Man is in the list...
- daseiner1 6y agothat’s directed by Carol Reed, not Orson.
- scarecrowbob 6y agoI am aware of that... but OW is in it...
- clwswrds 6y ago> glaring, and curious both of these things can be true without being condescending. it is kind of interesting that welles didn't make the list given his status as a filmmaker, and i don't think the author is completely doubting the taste of one of the greats here lol
- qntty 6y agoSeems like this is ordered by year, so the first isn't necessarily his most favorite.
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- bwanab 6y agoHe agrees with me that “Barry Lyndon” is Kubrick’s best. I guess I feel a little vindicated since I’ve never found anybody else that did agree with that. I love all of Kubrick’s films, but in some of the best, he just couldn’t tell the story it seems. Barry Lyndon tells the story in addition to being classic Kubrick.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- strunz 6y agoYou must not be in the internet much, because this is always the contrarian pick. In fact, your same comment is repeated multiple times in this very thread.
- wellthisisgreat 6y ago"Barry Lyndon" always felt like a film that Kubrick just did in his spare time and took no creative- / deadline- / budget- / non-Barry-Lyndon-as-Kubrick-wants-it-to-be -related input from anyone. A pure Kubrick piece. I do enjoy "Killing", however, so much that I am tempted to call it my Kubrick's favorite.
- hardwaregeek 6y agoFavorite movie lists are somewhat BS. At least for me, my favorite movies evolve constantly. It depends on what I've seen recently, what's been on the forefront of my mind, my mood, etc. Not to mention there's movies that I find fascinating that I may not love. Or movies that had a profound effect on me that I'm not jumping to rewatch. Someone like Kurosawa has likely seen thousands of movies. This is likely a small snapshot into a larger universe of his personal cinema. Instead of lists, I love the Criterion setup of interviewing the person and having them talk about each film and how it impacted their lives. It's far more interesting to hear why Barry Jenkins loved La Cienaga than to see it on his list at #10.
- chavignol 6y agoThere are great films in the Criterion Collection but there are also quite a lot of average films. I live in France and we have access (not at the moment because of covid) to unlimited movie pass (the best is UGC illimité if you live in Paris) for as little as 22€/month. I usually try to go and watch a lot of films but when I'm busy and have to select films, checking rottentomatoes and going to see films that have >90% score is a fast way to filter out the bad films. Recently, I have started buying great films so that I can share them with my parents who don't live in a big city. Most films I have bought are from the Criterion Collection but it's quite expensive to. get (need to order from Amazon.com as criterion.com won't ship to Europe) and it's a real pain to deal with region restrictions (most films are region A but some such as Tampopo are region B so you need either two blu-ray players or a region-free one such as the Freebox Revolution with the Konami code) Also, some choices made by Criterion are really questionable: some films (for example Like Someone in Love) have subtitles hardcoded. (maybe it's the case for all non English films. I haven't checked with films in Spanish but there are hardcoded subtitles in films in Japanese, Chinese and Korean) I get it that it's probably cheaper to get the rights of a film with hardcoded subtitles but I think people who are willing to pay $45 for a film wouldn't mind paying $5 more and have the ability to remove subtitles.
- js2 6y agoI've imported the list to Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/js2/list/akira-kurosawas-100-favorite-movies/detail/ https://letterboxd.com/js2/list/akira-kurosawas-100-favorite... One curiosity: Aoi sanmyaku (青い山脈) is apparently "The Blue Mountains", but OC translated it as "The Green Mountains." (Also, it's two parts, so I added both to the Letterboxd list, similar to Ivan the Terrible, which is why there's 102 entries.)
- scienceman 6y agoFun fact: 青い (ah-oi) means both green and blue in Japanese. There is a more specific word for green 緑 (midori) but 青い is still commonly used to mean green. For instance, "green light" (as in a stop light) is 青信号 (ah-oh shingou) where 信号 means signal.
- lovemenot 6y agoThis (lack of) B-G distinction also occurs in many languages other than Japanese. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distincti...
- azernik 6y ago"Green" is a reasonable translation - the same word is used for the "green" of plants or traffic lights. When referring to a mountain it is very likely to be referring to its greenery. The boundaries between named colors have historically varied wildly between languages.
- fireattack 6y agoWhen paired with mountain, I'd say blue is more accurate. 青山 is a fixed term (not quite "idiom" but you get the idea) originated from Chinese.
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- jancsika 6y agoGodfather II over Godfather?!? Godfather II over Godfather?!? Still, it looks like a worthwhile list to plunder. I plundered a lot of the movie names dropped by Jerry Harvey in "Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession." Imagine having such an eye for movies that you could watch "Heaven's Gate"-- considered the flop of flops at the time-- and surmise that it's probably a great movie that got cut poorly. Even more impressive-- imagine having such credibility that you could convince an audience who yawned through 2.5 hours of "the most boring movie ever" to wade through 3 hours and 40 minutes of a longer cut of the same movie. He basically invented the "director's cut."
- ghaff 6y agoGodfather 2 > Godfather seems to be a pretty popular opinion although it's been so long since I watched either that I don't have a real opinion at this point.
- mixmastamyk 6y agoThey were supposed to be in chronological order. Still doesn't explain how II could be before I however.
- hellbannedguy 6y agoI had a film class in college, and the instructor used Godfather 2 as a film better than the original. At the time, I agreed, but not anymore. Both are terrific. I wonder if I will ever see another great film again though, and it’s not because I’m aging.
- archagon 6y agoWell, here’s something to hope for, at least: “In April 2019, Coppola announced that he plans to direct Megalopolis, which he had been developing for many years prior. Speaking to Deadline he said ‘[...] I plan this year to begin my longstanding ambition to make a major work utilizing all I have learned during my long career, beginning at age 16 doing theater, and that will be an epic on a grand scale, which I've titled Megalopolis’.”
- 6y ago
- nanis 6y agoThree movies for freedom lovers: * Logan's Run ... It really is safe outside * Demolition Man ... "You see, according to Cocteau's plan I'm the enemy, 'cause I like to think; I like to read." * Gattaca ... "I belonged to a new underclass, no longer determined by social status or the color of your skin. No, we now have discrimination down to a science."
- nanis 6y agoCorrect me if I am wrong ... but I am under the impression that Kurosawa does not make "movies". He makes "films". The kind that makes people mad when you fall asleep a quarter of the way in.
- yesenadam 6y agoYou're wrong. For me, Ikiru and Dersu Uzala are the best, but the usual ones mentioned are great too. Some I didn't see mentioned on this page yet that I also really like: One Wonderful Sunday (1947), Red Beard (1965), Dodesukaden (Clickety-Clack, 1970). First one I saw was The Hidden Fortress (1958), remade in the west as Star Wars – and Yoda, it seems to me, is Dersu Uzala. I think his movies seem so good because everything about them is good. Screenplay, camera angles, editing, actors, music..etc.
- nanis 6y ago> I think his movies seem so good because everything about them is good. Seems to me you just made my point. :-) I must have missed the greatness while sleeping.
- myrandomcomment 6y agoI have only seen 12 of the movies on the list. I have 88 new movies to watch. Kurosawa did the best Macbeth. If you have not seen it, I highly recommend it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throne_of_Blood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throne_of_Blood
- Legion 6y agoWhat a terrible list. It doesn't even have Seven Samurai on it!
- wellthisisgreat 6y agoI've got 37, wonder how many films did anybody else get, who cared to count?
- luxpir 6y agoHere's a list for clearer viewing, cover art etc.: https://letterboxd.com/luxpir/list/kurosawas-top-100/ https://letterboxd.com/luxpir/list/kurosawas-top-100/