"Actor: Yukiko Shimaza"

• Seven Samurai | DVD | (22/11/1999) from £17.29   |  Saving you £2.70 (15.62%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Unanimously hailed as one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of the motion picture, Seven Samurai has inspired countless films modelled after its basic premise. But Akira Kurosawa's classic 1954 action drama has never been surpassed in terms of sheer power of emotion, kinetic energy, and dynamic character development. The story is set in the 1600s, when the residents of a small Japanese village are seeking protection against repeated attacks by a band of marauding thieves. Offering mere handfuls of rice as payment, they hire seven unemployed "ronin" (masterless samurai), including a boastful swordsman (Toshiro Mifune) who is actually a farmer's son desperately seeking glory and acceptance. The samurai get acquainted with but remain distant from the villagers, knowing that their assignment may prove to be fatal. The climactic battle with the raiding thieves remains one of the most breathtaking sequences ever filmed. It's poetry in hyperactive motion and one of Kurosawa's crowning cinematic achievements. This is not a film that can be well served by any synopsis; it must be seen to be appreciated and belongs on the short list of any definitive home-video library. --Jeff Shannon

• Akira Kurosawa - The Samurai Collection | DVD | (07/06/2010) from £34.43   |  Saving you £5.56 (16.15%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Akira Kurosawa: The Samurai Collection (5 Discs)

• Seven Samuari (Blu-ray Steelbook) | Blu Ray | (21/04/2014) from £21.98   |  Saving you £-1.99 (-10.00%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Limited Edition Steelbook - includes debossed title treatment. In sixteenth-century Japan a poor village is raided every year by a group of bandits until, driven to the brink of starvation, the villagers decide to hire professional warriors to protect them. With only three meagre meals a day to offer as payment, their quest seems an impossible one. Kurosawa's masterpiece testifies to his admiration for the classic Western, and in 1960 John Sturges repaid the compliments by remaking Seven Samurai as The Magnificent Seven.

• Mikio Naruse - Three Films | DVD | (04/12/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  Presented here in a lavish box set along with an accompanying book the Masters Of Cinema series presents three of Mikio Naruse's finest films Repast (1951) depicts the lives of common people in this instance to capture the pungent atmosphere of fading love. Set shortly after World War II and concerning a struggling marriage between salaryman Hatsunosuke (Ken Uehara) and his wife Michiyo (Setsuko Hara) it focuses on the emotional crisis of the bored housewife. The repetitive tedium of her domestic life is brought into focus by a visit from Hatsunosuke's niece Satoko (Yukiko Shimazaki ) on whom Hatsunosuke lavishes much attention. Adapted from a novel by Kawabata Yasunari the first Japanese author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature Sound Of The Mountain (1954) is one of Naruse's best-known and most respected films typifying his preferred genre of shomin-geki (films about the daily lives of ordinary people). Set in the ancient seaside town of Kamakura Kawabata's home the film depicts the increasingly close relationship between a childless young woman Kikuko (Setsuko Hara) and her father-in-law Shingo (So Yamamura) to whom she turns as her own marriage to the neglectful and philandering Shuichi (Ken Uehara) disintegrates. The more Shuichi destroys his marriage the closer Shingo and Kikuko become. The third film Flowing directed in 1956 (the year that prostitution was outlawed in Japan) explores the inner workings of a changing world as traditional geishas faced the impending decline of their hidden way of life and the looming spectre of prostitution. It depicts the story of a widow Rika (Kinuyo Tanaka) who is forced to work for a living and becomes a maid in a struggling Tokyo geisha house where Tsutayakko (Isuzu Yamada ) its proud mistress tries to save the house from becoming either a restaurant or a brothel. It is through Rika a surrogate for the viewer that we are introduced to the various geishas who drink and fight worry over the lack of clients and attempt to stave off imminent extinction.