14. Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto vs. women in general

The first film in the Samurai trilogy, Hiroshi Inagaki's Miyamoto Musashi is one of those films that I can watch and recognize as being good, but for whatever reason fails to connect with me on any kind of emotional level. While watching this movie I kept thinking, "yup, this sure is a good movie," but that's all. To be frank, I'm not all that pumped to fire up the next installment in the trilogy, mainly because I anticipate another good movie that just kind of washes over me. I don't know why this is.

I keep using "good" because nothing here feels great to me. Mifune's fine as always, but it doesn't help that I've already seen him in other, more iconic samurai roles. Even the dickhead antics of the Buddhist priest Soho didn't register much of a response from me. There's a lot to like in this movie, and I particularly liked the scene of Mifune hanging from a tree and then later being locked in a room full of books, but these were satisfactory to me, nothing more. As for stuff I flat-out hated, there's a shrewish girl who Matahachi hooks up with who feels like she was written by a teenage boy who hates women. That character yanked me out of the movie because she didn't feel like a real person, just random, blind misogyny poured into one person. Granted, Otsu was OK, even if she was kind of simpering, but still. It's kind of odd to criticize this film for its female characters while I gave Seven Samurai a free pass, but there's a world of difference between these two films. At no point while watching Seven Samurai was I pulled out of the movie and forced to think about how the characters were written.  I don't know. This is a fine movie, but maybe the lack of humor got to me. Just give me some fucking jokes, Hiroshi. Something!

The film ends on a Fellowship of the Ring note, with the story unfinished and practically screaming for a "To Be Continued" tag. Therefore, it feels odd to rank this as a self-contained film. As the journey of a samurai from being a defeated bandit to the priest's apprentice it works decently, but because there's clearly more to come on the horizon it doesn't give you any kind of closure as the picture fades to black. Strangely, while this is clearly a bottom-level film for me, I think I liked it more than Amarcord. I don't know why Amarcord keeps getting progressively worse in my estimation the further away I get from the viewing, but it does.

1. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
2. Seven Samurai (1954)
3. The Seventh Seal (1957)
4. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
5. Grand Illusion (1937)
6. Hard Boiled (1992)
7. The 400 Blows (1959)
8. Walkabout (1971)
9. The Killer (1989)
10. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
11. A Night to Remember (1958)
12. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
13. Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto (1954)
14. Amarcord (1973)

Next up: I continue on my hero's journey as I join Mifune for his Duel at Ichijoji Temple. Will this film somehow boost my appreciation of this one? Let's hope so.