Winter Kills (1979)

Winter Kills (1979) is the absurdist extension of the conspiracy thriller in vogue during the 1970s. Imagine The Parallax View, a riff on imagined counter narratives to the official record of the JFK assassination, but exaggerated with a strange comedy, not quite spoof or parody. Each scene in Winter Kills is eventually marked by a […]

Drunken Angel (1948)

Past Movie Squad reviewer Paul Grace wrote a recommendation of Drunken Angel (1948) for an old issue of the VHS Tracking zine. Directed by Akira Kurosawa, I only realised after I had watched it that it was his first collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune. While he’s always been a handsome, attractive man to me, Mifune […]

The Sword Of Doom (1966)

All I knew about the Japanese movie The Sword Of Doom (1966) was the iconic image of a samurai in the middle distance of a forest, submerged in fog and surrounded by bodies felled by his sword. I didn’t realise that the film’s main character was an embodiment of evil. Ryunosuke Tsukue (Tatsuya Nakadai) is […]

Red Beard (1965)

Akira Kurosawa’s Red Beard (1965; Akahige) might intimidate with its three hour length. But this drama, the last film Kurosawa would make in black and white, and with regular collaborator and star Toshiro Mifune, is a beautiful, moving experience. Set in the 19th century in Koshikawa, it is basically a medical drama focused on the […]

Stray Dog (1949)

In Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (1949; Nora inu), a young Toshiro Mifune plays a rookie detective named Murakami who feels shame and twists himself in knots over losing his newly acquired Colt pistol to a pick-pocket on a tram. This is both a film noir and a police procedural, which seems to have influences on […]