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THRONE OF BLOOD -- Kurosawa's version of MACBETH; brilliantly directed and adapted and acted. Toshiro Mifune is "Macbeth"; Minoru Chiaki is "Banquo."
RASHOMON -- This movie poses the profound and unanswerable questions, "What is truth and who can testify to it?" The cast includes the young Toshiro Mifune (as a bandit), Takashi Shimura (as the woodcutter), and Minoru Chiaki (as a Buddhist monk).
IKIRU -- Takashi Shimura's greatest performance, as a Japanese bureaucrat who discovers that he has a short time to live and struggles to find something that will give his life meaning.
SEVEN SAMURAI -- The leader is played by Takashi Shimura, and Minoru Chiaki and Toshiro Mifune are also here.
YOJIMBO -- Toshiro Mifune as the masterless samurai
SANJURO -- a sequel to YOJIMBO
THE HIDDEN FORTRESS -- a source for STAR WARS, in which Mifune plays a brigand who is not what he seems.
KAGEMUSHA [The Shadow Warrior] -- Tatsuya Nakadai plays a thief who is hired by a warlord to impersonate the warlord while he recovers from a battle wound, only to be trapped in that role when the warlord dies; in turn, he "becomes" the warlord even after his imposture is exposed.
RAN -- Kurosawa's version of KING LEAR, in which Tatsuya Nakadai is "Lear"
RED BEARD -- Kurosawa's story of a physician in 19th-century Japan (Mifune again) and his attempts to teach a spoiled and arrogant young aristocrat who has chosen medicine as his career just what that choice should entail.
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