Tag Archives: Y

Yojimbo 4.5/5

Yojimbo

Wonderful Eastern, with Tishuro Mifune spending the first 3rd of the movie munching rice, meat and other assorted goodies, drinking sake and killing tough-talking bandit types, whilst nonchalantly bringing the town to a boiling tension as he plays one gang against the other in assorted ways.

The bombastic jangling sound design, Mifune’s charismatic killer, the silly gurning faces of the heavies, and Kurosawa’s wonderful eye for composing shots and letting the camera enjoy the movement all adds up to a real treat and highmark of samurai genre movies.

The daddy of Lone Wolf and Cub movies, and the partial granddaddy of the impressive recent 13 Assassins.

Recommended.

Yeux Sans Visage 3.5/5

Yeux Sans Visage

There is an odd mix of poetic and delicate sensibility and gore in this movie. It has some quite haunting and striking imagery – and this, I think, is the thing that will stay with me above all else – but also quite jarring and wincey graphic surgery (oh, how they must have dropped their jaws in the 50s to this).

Its pedigree is obvious I think – It reminds me of both Cocteau (particularly La Belle et La Bete) in its lyrical bits, and Clouzot in its more graphic parts (I’m thinking of Les Diaboliques).

Still, with all this, it seems a little overrated to be on so many ‘top X horror movies of all time’ lists. It’s definitely one to see, and I’m glad I’ve seen it, but I don’t think it’s quite as good as it’s sold.

Alida Valli was rather good I think (I know her from The Third Man at a young age, and Suspiria at an older age), and really stands out as one of the main players.

That central performance by wraith-ish daughter is really elegant and ghostly though.