Favorite Samurai Movie?

What is your favorite Samurai movie? Seven Samurai is one of the biggies. But Yojimbo and Sanjuro are strong contenders as well. 47 Ronin, Sword of Doom, the Samurai trilogy (about the famous Miyamoto Musashi) Zatoichi, Ran, Kagemusha, Hidden Fortress, Rashomon, Throne of Blood, On and on goes the list. What is your favorite?

Don't forget the Kill Bill movies... Vol 1, Vol 2 and soon Vol 3 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1521225/)

Yojimbo is not only my favorite samurai movie but one of my top favorite movies of any sort whatsoever.

My son's mother had to name a cat "Toshiro" so that I wouldn't be tempted to name my son after Mifune.

I'd add 13 Assassins to your list. Amazing, tight, and lots of blood. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1436045/

Samurai Night Fever, featuring John Belushi and OJ Simpson

One of the strangest ones I've seen is Onibaba (1964, Kaneto Shindo). It's sort of about the breakdown of society in wartime I guess - anyway, it's medieval Japan, there are 2 women living a miserable existence in a load of really high grass, somewhere in which there's a war going on. Every now and then wounded samurai blunder out of the grass, and if the women can get close enough they kill them and scrape a living from selling the armour. They have a really huge and sort of symbolic hole in the ground, down which they dump the bodies. However one of these guys happens to be wearing a demonic mask which they steal, and however bad things were, they are about to get worse. It's really bleak and weird.

That sounds really interesting. I'll be sure to check that out!

That sounds really interesting. I'll be sure to check that out!

Another one I thought of, a film based around four ghost stories/folk tales: Kwaidan, 1965, by Masaki Kobayashi. They are all creepy, set in pre C20th Japan. There's one where a musician is hauled off to a strange court to perform an epic describing a great past maritime battle where a clan was annihilated, and it gradually becomes apparent that his audience has an intimate personal connection with the tale .. somehow this one really gets me even though it's understated .. I suppose I'm straying off the samurai thread though .. do you have a favourite, brandon?

<Have to agree that this is a great film and provides a point of view seldom seen in war movies. How do the people who are most impacted by warfare (civilians) survive and to what extremes will they go to do so? It is also a great allegorical tale of the loss of morality when people go to extremes.

That's a tough one. I thoroughly enjoy watching all of the Kurosawa classics but appreciate them all for different reasons. I still have yet to carve out time to watch Kwaidan, but it's on my list of stuff to watch.

I was pleasantly surprised with 13 Assassins. Prior to watching it, I was worried that the previews I'd seen would turn out to be misleading... but it turned out to be a very entertaining film. One of the deleted scenes definitely added a strange and humorous spin to one of the 13, but I'll let folks experience that for themselves rather than spoiling it here.

It's been a while, but I was pretty blown away by Twilight samurai. Not quite the action of 13 samurai, but the story is beautifully told.

Not quite a movie, but the anime Samurai Champloo is pretty decent.

Not seen that yet .. moved it up the list!

Another one - Azumi was quite good, in the old-Japan-waif-girl-assassin genre. A real exercise in how to make someone who can't handle a sword look as though they can though. I say that because I then saw Azumi 2, which didn't manage it.

Ooh, I'd been meaning to ask about samurai anime .. thanks .. any more to recommend?