Ever notice that every blockbuster movie has the same fundamental pieces? A hero, a journey, some conflicts to muck it all up, a reward, and the hero returning home and everybody applauding his or...

16th-century JapanThe "where" in this piece isn't as important as the "when." Yeah, sure, it's set in Japan—try to contain your surprise—and gives us a thick slice of Japanese culture for our d...

Third-Person OmniscientThere aren't a lot of surprises here: no fancy loop-backs or even such basics as cross-cutting all that much. We start at the beginning and work our way chronologically to th...

Adventure, Historical Fiction, Folklore, Coming-of-AgeFirst and foremost, Seven Samurai is about excitement. Thundering warlords come galloping down on top of our heroes as they engage in a life-or...

Believe it or not, the title was going to be Six Samurai, but after Kurosawa decided that they needed someone to shake things up and added Kikuchiyo to keep everybody on their toes, it turned into...

The ending is kind of a happy one: bandits dead, village saved and samurai victorious. So why, then, does it leave us feeling like we just got slugged in the gut? For starters, it comes at a cost....

PGWe're going to go with PG just because this is a movie about war and death and stuff, but, as was the style at the time, it's pretty tame by today's standards. In fact, until the end, most of the...