Barnes & Noble

Akira Kurosawa's last great period film may also be his grandest. While not as innovative as Rashomon or The Seven Samurai and not as lean as Yojimbo or Throne of Blood, 1985's Ran (literally translated, "Chaos") is a film utterly colossal in both conception and execution. Loosely based on Shakespeare's King Lear, the story follows the tragic chain of events set in motion after the aging warlord Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai) divides his hard-won kingdom among his sons. Warfare and treachery follow -- the latter instigated by the vengeful Lady Kaede (Mieko Harada) -- as the exiled and hunted Hidetora confronts the ghosts of his bloody past. Kurosawa injects the Western source material with Buddhist perspectives on redemption and forgiveness while capturing the proceedings with dazzling visuals that are both beautiful and horrific. No less attention has gone into the performances: Nakadai's haunted Hidetora and Harada's spiderlike Kaede rank as some of the most unforgettable creations in the director's oeuvre. With enough gripping human drama to match the colossal size of its battle scenes, Ran is not merely one of Kurosawa's grandest accomplishments but one of cinema's as well. Volk Lindsay

All Movie Guide

Jean-Luc Godard directed this brightly colored, pop-art homage to American crime cinema, which somehow finds room for extended commentary on leftist politics and the corrupt nature of advertising. Paula Nelson (Anna Karina) is a mystery woman (Is she a reporter? Perhaps a spy?) who used to be involved with Richard, a man who is now an outspoken Communist and has been linked to the murder of a foreign agent. Paula wants to silence Richard before he starts making trouble for her, but she can't find much hard evidence that's he's still alive outside of a recently discovered tape recorder that plays his recorded rants on current political issues. While speaking with Typhus (Ernest Menzer), a small time hood who knows about Paula's relationship with Richard, shots ring out and suddenly Typhus is dead. As Paula tries to find a way to get rid of the body, she tries to discover who killed him and why, as a pair of lackadaisical hoods (Laszlo Szabo and Jean-Pierre Leaud) follow her around Paris. Filled with references to American genre cinema and dedicated to Samuel Fuller and Nicholas Ray, Made In U.S.A. was the last film Godard would make with his one-time wife and frequent collaborator Anna Karina, and it was filmed simultaneously with another feature Godard released in 1966, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her. The admittedly flimsy plot was loosely adapted from the novel The Jugger by Donald E. Westlake (published under the pseudonym Richard Stark); Westlake wasn't paid for the rights, and he prevented the film from being released in the United States until after his death in 2008. Mark Deming

Product Details

• UPC: 715515045216
• Source: CRITERION
• Region Code: 1
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Editions: Subtitled
• Time: 1:25:00
• Sales Rank: 189

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