December 29 movie: Seven Samurai. I've been watching the Samurai 7 anime series (excellent by the way), but I'm between discs right now, so I watched the original Kurosawa movie on which the anime is based. It's still an amazing movie, so good I almost don't know what to say about it. It's about so many things: first and most obviously, it's the basis for countless war movies. Basically any movie about assembling a team owes a debt to Seven Samurai. But beyond that, it's about individualism, class conflict, changing social structures and outdated moral codes, male friendship, ... what am I missing. A lot, I'm sure.
What I owe to Seven Samurai is that it's the first movie to make me appreciate and really enjoy battle scenes. Before this movie I had trouble following battle sequences, and didn't much like war movies because of it. Seven Samurai showed me how much I was missing. For that I thank it.
I really need to see this film.
You really do! It's so good!