julienboulard

This is the 3rd and last episode of the "Miyamoto Musashi" or also called "Samourai" trilogy, from director Inagaki with famous Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. The 1st episode having won the 1956 Oscar award of best foreign movie ! Inagaki's directing is refined and perfect, scenery is beautiful especially the sunset duel, choreography of combats is marvellous. Inagaki's directing and Mifune's great acting bring life to Musashi's legend and depict him with a lot of humanity.

This episode has the most significance for Japanese with the famous combat between Miyamoto Mifune, invincible samourai of more than 60 duels armed with a wooden sword, and Sasaki Kojiro, most formidable adversary and skillful swordsman armed with an extremely long sword, on the beach of Ganryu Island at sunset. The trilogy shows the life of Japan's most famous samourai and one of it's main philosopher, with the "Gorin-no-sho" treaty of 5 rings, with his sword techniques and Budhism life philosophy. In summary, the 1st episode is how he becomes an adult man, the 2nd how he becomes an invincible swordsman and the 3rd how he becomes a legend. Subplots being his relationship with Otsu who sacrifices her life for Musashi.

This trilogy is among Japan's two samourai masterpieces with Kurosawa's "Seven Samurais", mainly because of the directing/acting and Musashi's aura. Other Must-see Sword movies are recent movie Gohatto (or Tabou, 1999), Kurosawa's "Ame agaru" (After the rain, 1999), "Yojimbo" (The bodyguard) and "Sugata Sanshiro" (The Judo saga).

What a pleasant surprise it was. I thought it was going to be another Woody Allen movie with his ever-lasting neurotic character. Well, it was more than that. A creative mix between a modern comedy and a musical. The plot is about Woody who has an adorable adopted kid, incredibly gifted, and he decides to search for the child's supposedly genius mother. He more or less steals the legal documents, finds out she's a prostitute, decides to use her services only for talking and help her get out of it by helping her find a husband. It gets horribly wrong of course but ends quite happily.

Believe me, the scene where Murray Abraham appears from Woody's sub-conscience as a ancient Greek philosopher to temporize him and ends up watching the corridor, while Woody searches illegally for the child's documents, is hilarious.

And don't miss the ending, which is a wild musical finale in an Ancient Greek theater, with all the Greeks tragedy actors dancing and singing all over the place. Plainly surprising, funny and refreshing food for the mind. And it precedes the more commercial "Everyone says I love you" which extended the "musical comedy" insertions found in "Mighty Aphrodite".

What can possibly said, except that everybody remembers this movie. We all remember the realistic/futuristic world, with the mix of Chinese, Latin and Europeans language and culture, the flying cars, the dark skies with sudden bursts of flames, the gloomy rainy atmosphere, the human-like desperate androïds and especially, Harrison Ford's wonderful portrayal of Deckard. Memorable scenes are in all the movie, as when Harrison shoots a woman androïd crashing though glass windows or the wonderful human ending with Rudger Hauer.

Talk about depth for this movie : the plot is simple but has twists, the actors are just great, the special effects are clean and beautiful. It's pure poetry with a bit of action and a lot of Sci-fi atmosphere.

See it or miss one of the two best Sci-fi movie ever, with the famous "2001 : Odyssey..." !