"Akira Kurosawa is best known for Seven Samurai, but this is more fun. Hitchcockian and full of dread and gorgeous widescreen imagery."

"A meditation on the nature of reality by Akira Kurosawa, one of greatest of all Japanese films, with magnificent performances by Toshiro Mifune. Is there such a thing as “objective reality”? Or, as Kurosawa suggests, is it all in the eye of the beholder?"

"Deciding which Akira Kurosawa film to choose for this list was extremely difficult, as he made so many tremendous films. Rashomon, Seven Samurai, and Yojimbo are all amazing, but I love this version of Macbeth. During the final scene, Kurosawa had trained archers fire real arrows at Toshiro Mifune. Brilliant."

"Akira Kurosawa made films covered in rich tapestries of Japanese history and charged with terrible violence and drama. Yet here, the contemporary and confined world of a rich industrialist (Toshiro Mifune) who is faced with an overwhelming decision is spare, cold, and objective in the extreme. Hideo Oguni, who worked on seven Kurosawa films, including Seven Samurai, wrote the screenplay based on an Ed McBain novel. Mifune, once again, shows why he is the Japanese Marlon Brando, Edward G. Robinson, and Gregory Peck rolled into one."

"It is probably the only film that I’ve ever seen which has something like a perfect balance, which does not occur in filmmaking very often. You sense it sometimes in great music, but I haven’t experienced it in cinema, and it’s mind boggling. I don’t know how [Akira] Kurosawa did it. It’s still a mystery to me. That’s greatness."

"Let’s go with Seven Samurai. I’m a huge Akira Kurosawa fan. You can tell that Parabellum is the closest thing to a western chanbara film—which is a Japanese slang term for a samurai/sword-fighting movie. John Wick is basically paying tribute to all the great samurai and spaghetti westerns out there. That’s where we get it."

"Most people don’t want to hear about the weird dream you had. It may be interesting or bewildering to you, but really no one else cares. I would say that unless you’re Akira Kurosawa and can get Martin Scorsese to play van Gogh in the weird dream you had about van Gogh, you should knock it off because you’re only losing friends. This whole list could have been Kurosawa films. Tied with (in preferential order): Ikiru, Seven Samurai, Rashomon, High and Low, Throne of Blood, Ran, Stray Dog, Yojimbo, Red Beard"

"Most of my life I’d heard of this amazing film and knew that Akira Kurosawa created the original visions that spawned The Magnificent Seven and Sergio Leone’s “Man with No Name” flicks, which I watched regularly growing up. It wasn’t until Kurosawa’s Ran hit theaters in the eighties that I was finally exposed to his artistry and power. And Criterion has given me my favorite of his films in the most pristine, perfect presentation I could imagine."

"[Akira] Kurosawa’s Rashomon. I mean, any Kurosawa blows my mind out my ass. We did a production of Rashomon that was actually a play. We did that at my college. We had this amazing sword teacher named Robin McFarquhar, and that was one of his big triumphs, was this production of Rashomon. It’s such a cool play, because you do it four times in a row, and you get everybody’s perspective. You know, one time the samurai is brave, one time he’s a coward. It’s really delicious for the actors."