"Although any one of the recent godsend rush of Kurosawa releases could go in this slot. For years now this gem (and much of his filmography) has only been available for us poor Region 1 sods on crappy import discs, and though the broken English subtitles via a bad Chinese translation had a sometimes poetic dadaistic flair, it’s a relief to finally have a beautiful, intelligible disc of it. The film itself stands easily up to Stray Dog and High and Low as one of Kurosawa’s best contemporary crime dramas."

"On the surface the Odyssey is a hero’s book about journey and adventure, but just beneath the main storyline rests a feminist arc of subtly navigating a man’s world without sacrificing your ideals. For me, Penelope, Odysseus’s faithful wife, is my favorite character. A skilled manipulator, Penelope cunningly evades unwanted suitors by claiming to knit or weave (depending on the translation you read) a funeral shroud for her elderly Father-in-Law. She pledges that upon completion of the shroud, she will remarry, but as a stall tactic she secretly undoes her work at night."