In no particular order, I’d probably pick Terminator 2, Die Hard, Robocop, The Dark Knight, Heat, Kill Bill 1+2, District 9, The Crow (been awhile since I’ve seen it though), Speed, and maybe John Wick.
There’s probably quite a few I’ve missed out on, especially foreign action films.
What are your picks, either popular or obscure?
If some samurai movies are “Make Japan Great Again,” this is the “Japan Was Never Great” response.
Nice. I heard that about the film, that it tries to undue a lot of the fluff around samurai culture. It’ll be the next movie I watch then.
Yeah - most of them are set in the 19th century and are mournful about it being a dying way of life. But this one’s set at the very beginning of the period, and has the protagonist baldly state that “The thing we call samurai honor is nothing but a a facade.” Hope you enjoy. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
The director, Masaki Kobayashi, was a Marxist. I think he quit the Communist Party after 1956 but his films stay on the left. The Human Condition is ten hours of proving that you can’t change the system from within, his film about baseball is titled I Will Buy You, etc.
Bushido was made up in the 19th century by Christian missionaries iirc, real tales of samurai have them being pretty barbaric people who’d do shit like murder peasants for fun. Just like with any landed noble class in a hierarchy so I’d enjoy this film.
