Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo is funny: Sanjura’s twitchy, itchy tics; Inokichi’s monobrowed buffoonery; Kannuki the Giant’s huge mallet. Even the dog carrying the human hand betrays that the film’s tone will be blackly comedic.
Akira Kurosawa’s samurai, Stuart Heisler’s gangster, Sergio Leone’s cowboy, and George Miller’s misfit suffer a similar black eye, but with dramatically different effect.
The short films in Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams wind like a trail through a wood, reminding us of our primal fascinations and fears of nature and the key part nature stories play in storytelling.
