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Throne of Blood

Kumonosu-jô (Throne of Blood)

1957

Akira Kurosawa

Toshirô Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Takashi Shimura, Akira Kubo ...

8.1

9,227

Drama 'Macbeth' is reimagined as a samurai in feudal Japan. Taketoki Washizu (Toshiro Mifune) is a valiant warrior whose life is transformed by an encounter with a ghostly female spirit. The spirit offers several predictions, finally stating that Washizu will rise to power over the current warlord. When these predictions begin coming true, he and his ambitious wife decide to ensure his ascendancy to power by murdering the current ruler.

	Author	Review
United Kingdom	Derek Malcolm The Guardian	"It remains a landmark of visual strength, permeated by a particularly Japanese sensibility, and is possibly the finest Shakespearean adaptation ever committed to the screen."	POS
United Kingdom	David Parkinson Empire	"Highly cinematic (...) It’s a film studded with magnificent set-pieces (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Bosley Crowther The New York Times	"Kurosawa's camera is handled with magnificent skill. There is exciting communication in its very movements and in the imagistic forms it evolves"	POS
United Kingdom	Jamie Russell BBC	"'Throne of Blood' spectacularly transforms the source play - turning it into a terrifying journey through darkness, evil, and despair (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Chuck Bowen Slant	"Kurosawa's definitive expression of the estrangement one experiences from their own life as it spins wildly out of control, and he goes about invoking this existential damnation with a ruthless precision (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United Kingdom	Time Out	"It's visually ravishing, as you would expect, employing compositional tableaux from the Noh drama, high contrast photography, and extraordinary images"	POS
United States	Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader	"One of his finest works—charged with energy, imagination, and, in keeping with the subject, sheer horror."	POS

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