Shojiro Motoki Movies

Macbeth is reimagined as a samurai in feudal Japan in director Akira Kurosawa's classic adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy. Familiar with Orson Welles's more faithful adaptation, Kurosawa chose to place a more personal stamp on his version by translating the events and characters to historical Japan. The equivalent of the tragic Scottish lord is Taketoki Washizu (Toshiro Mifune), a valiant warrior whose life is transformed by an encounter with a ghostly female spirit. The spirit offers several predictions, finally stating that Washizu will rise to power over the current warlord. When these predictions begin coming true, he and his ambitious wife decide to ensure his ascendancy to power by murdering the current ruler. As with Macbeth, Washizu achieves his goal, but his guilt and the suspicions of others soon bring about his downfall. The shift to Japanese settings is seamless, creating a historically accurate and resonant work with a culturally distinct visual style. The supporting performances also recall Japanese tradition, particularly Isuzu Yamada's creepily unemotional take on Lady Macbeth, while Mifune proves consistently gripping in the sheer intensity of his performance. The intelligence of Kurosawa's alterations retains the drama's tragic impact, especially during the conclusion, in which Washizu makes a memorable final stand against an advancing army. Impressive in every regard, Throne of Blood seems secure in the pantheon of superior film adaptations of William Shakespeare. ~ Judd Blaise, Rovi

When an elderly, wealthy man decides that nuclear holocaust is eminent in his country, he decides to move his family to Brazil at all costs--a place which, for some mysterious reason, he believes to be safe. His family refuses to move because they fear that the move will jeopardize their financial well-being. Nakajima burns down his foundry to force them to go to Brazil but, instead, they go to the courts and have him declared mentally incompetent. After several more increasingly irrational acts, he is finally placed in a mental asylum, where he sits staring at the sun, believing that he is on another planet and the sun is the raging inferno created by the Earth when it went up in the nuclear holocaust--vindicating his actions. A strong indictment against the inherent evils of nuclear warfare, it is also the story of a man's love and dedication to his family in the face of his own fears and endangerment. ~ Tana Hobart, Rovi

Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru details the existential struggle of one ordinary man in his desperate search for purpose. Upon learning he has terminal stomach cancer, a low-level government bureaucrat (Takashi Shimura) leaves his job of thirty years without a word to find meaning in the year he has left to live. He is completely alone in the world -- his wife is dead, his son is practically estranged, and his co-workers (the people with whom he has more contact than any others) are little more than strangers. Rather than face a death alone in pathos, Shimura opts to make up for lost time by going to the bar (for the first time in his life), spending every last yen in his wallet and drinking himself to death. There he meets a black-clad artist (a Mephistopheles to his Faust) who leads him on a hellish (and darkly humorous) tour of the city after dark as the two crawl through every booze-soaked juke-joint in town (Kurosawa's classical training as a painter surfaces in this sequence; many critics have noted the striking similarity of the crowded dance hall scenes to the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch, (particularly Walpurgis Night). Realizing he has missed nothing, Shimura then sets his sight on a pretty young girl from the office to divert his attention from his looming mortality. Although the girl fails to serve as a lifebuoy, she does give him the inspiration to do something meaningful -- to leave a legacy, however small, that makes the world a better place. A synopsis of Ikiru cannot serve the film justice; it simply must be seen. ~ Jeremy Beday, Rovi

Akira Kurosawa directs the black-and-white 1949 film noir Nora Inu (released in the U.S. in 1963 as Stray Dog). In his third film with Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune plays young police detective Murakami. One summer day on a crowded bus in Tokyo, his gun is stolen by a pickpocket. Rather than face the shame of reporting his gun missing, he chooses to go out and find it himself (there were not many weapons on the streets of Tokyo immediately following WWII). While trying to locate the gun, he discovers an entire criminal underworld. He is eventually helped on his journey by superior officer Sato (Takashi Shimura), who seems to suggest that the young detective is indulging in his own criminal desires. The search becomes even more desperate when Murakami finds out that his gun has been used in several crimes, including murder. He then develops an obsession with finding both the gun and the killer. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

Akira Kurosawa directs this romantic comedy about a pair of lovers struggling to have a pleasant Sunday outing. A young laborer named Yuzo (Isao Numazaki) and his fiancée, Masako (Chieko Nakakita), meet at the train station on their day off. With the weather beautiful and only a scant 35 yen in their pockets, the two first visit a model house, where Masako imagines being a housewife. Then Yuzo plays baseball with some boys, resulting in the ball landing on a cookie shop display. After buying the two crushed cookies, they pop in on a floorshow without paying admission, and then go to the zoo. Later, a scalper beats up Yuzo for trying to haggle for the price. Afterwards, they go back to his cramped room where they almost succumb to amorous feelings. Instead, they go and get coffee, where Yuzo is forced to leave his raincoat to pay for the bill. Walking past some ruins, they image running their own coffee shop. Their wonderful Sunday comes to an end with Masako hopping back on the train just after making plans for the following week. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi