I found Kill! on NetFlix in the Criterion DVD listings. I hadn't heard of this 1968 Japanese samurai film before but was curious when I read about it. Here's the description from Criterion's webpage.
SYNOPSIS:In this pitch-black action comedy by Kihachi Okamoto, a pair of down-on-their-luck swordsmen arrive in a dusty, windblown town, where they become involved in a local clan dispute. One, previously a farmer, longs to become a noble samurai. The other, a former samurai haunted by his past, prefers living anonymously with gangsters. But when both men discover the wrongdoings of the nefarious clan leader, they side with a band of rebels who are under siege at a remote mountain cabin. Based on the same source novel as Akira Kurosawa’s Sanjuro, Kill! playfully tweaks samurai film convention, borrowing elements from established chanbara classics and seasoning them with a little Italian western.
It turned out to be an entertaining movie with a nice sense of humor. The reluctant samurai is played by Tatsuya Nakadai, whom some might remember from Yojimbo where he played the sadistic gun toting son of one of the gangster clans. He's pretty entertaining here as is his co-star Elsushi Takahashi who plays the farmer with aspirations. That's the two of them in the little picture on the right. Some people get helped and some people wind up face down in the mud. It's a sad old world in ancient Japan but it might be worse in our next feature.
I had completely forgotten anything I might have picked up about Season Of The Witch, which came out Jan 7 2011, including that it stared Nick Cage and Ron Perlman. They are Crusaders who have gotten tired of killing people in the name of God. After a montague of a whole series of battles Nick kills a lady and he gets all bummed out. Joe pointed out that they would have been killing men women and children by the scores in every battle. Nick and Ron run away from the army and a month later they get caught and tossed in prison. Before they are hung for desertion the local priest enlists them to transport a witch to a monastery 6 days away. There's a plague going on and the people believe it's a curse. They think the witch might know something and want to have her brought to the Monks for interrogation. It's a tough journey through beautiful spooky forests and mountains. It doesn't go so well and people start dying. There's a lot of great settings, much of the movie filmed in Austria, Hungary and Croatia, but the story is nothing special. Monster, trip, dead people. You've seen it all before. The director Dominic Sena also directed the recent remake Gone In 60 Seconds and the John Travolta picture Swordfish. Both of them watchable entertainments that have more style than story sense. And I like the style packed funflicks well enough. Some of the effects in Season Of The Witch are pretty good but some of the supernatural beasts are only fair to middling. The witch calls to some wolves to help her and the film makers can't hold off with wolves they have to make them werebeasts of some sort, adding a layer of so-so cgi to the beasts. What was wrong with wolves, they're scary enough, not everything has to be ramped up. Oh, well, that's movie makin'. I read a fun piece over at What Would Tyler Durden Do about Indian Werewolves in the new Disney movie The Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp. I don't think I would bother buying SOTW but I'm not sorry that I saw it.
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