Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple

maybe this is me trying to match the events of this with the manga which i read ages ago, but i had some trouble focusing on all the turning gears. in my memory matahachi runs around abusing kojiro sasaki's name in a much more prevalent way, and he kind of gets pushed to the background here which confused me. i guess this confusion comes from having been exposed first to an adaptation that has more time to dwell on things, opposed to these 90-minute affairs. anyway it's still a lethargically comfortable jidaigeki that 100% benefits from being shot in color, so any qualms i may have about a... read more

this really lost me. it's slow and far too obsessed with how badly these women want musashi. like, oh my frickin' god. i kept losing interest. i get that this is some kind of three part sweeping historical epic, but damn. a huge part of this movie just has musashi hiding out at this place, while two women hysterically fall apart merely over his presence in the peripheral of their lives. the ridiculous thing is, musashi is barely aware, if at all, of any of this. he just wants to be a better swordsman. the movie would have us be invested in the stories of otsu and akami more than musashi read more