The Seven Samurai is one of the greatest and most entertaining movies ever made, IMHO. BD is right that Hidden Fortress is always cited as the bigger influence on Star War. I see the influence, the the pre-occupation with the impact these movies had on Star Wars sells these movies short.

Oh, for sure—I’m not a big Star Wars fan so I didn’t care too much one way or another on that. It probably is the most entertaining 3 hour movie I’ve ever seen! I can’t imagine watching Killers of the Flower Moon, Avatar 2, or Oppenheimer again soon but I could totally watch Seven Samurai again like, tomorrow. And yes, now that I’m Kurosawa-pilled Hidden Fortress is next on my list.

Dragon Inn

I need to watch this one. A while back, I saw an arthouse movie very much influenced by it, Goodbye, Dragon Inn, if you’ve heard of it. The trailer and description made it look interesting and action-packed, so I invited a date to see it. It turns out its an hour and a half of almost no talking, just watching 2 or 3 characters walk across a theater and not necessarily even interact with each other. It felt like when you get too high and time slows down to a crawl. It wasn’t in-of-itself a bad movie, but I was mortified to have taken a date to it. I felt like we got pranked. My date was a good sport about it though

Crumb

That sounds tough to watch. I think I’ve read one or two of his comics out of curiosity but didn’t really get it. It’s interesting that Crumb has gained so much respect (albeit for an outsider artist) in spite of the racism and misogyny in his comics. Ever since I found out about him through Harvey Pekar in American Splendor, I’ve been puzzled by Crumb’s staying power. But I guess maybe he didn’t gain popularity in spite of the racism and misogyny but because of it—it’s one of those things where it’s bad that it’s tough to look away. I’ve also heard that at least for the racism in his comics, it was mostly parody but I’m not sure how true that is.