Nobody can make you like this stuff if you don't want to. So although there's no doubt that "The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi" is the summer's most rousing action picture, it's also hard as nails, bloody ...

“The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi,” the latest entertainment from Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano, isn’t your average blind masseur-gambler-swordsman movie. Based on a series of popular genre standards ...

For all their considerable charms, the Zatoichi films are the epitome of genre filmmaking at its most formulaic. By contrast, since branching out from TV, director-editor-writer-actor Takeshi Kitano ...

Japanese writer, director and actor Takeshi “Beat” Kitano is a complicated talent. Equally adept at drama, deadpan comedy, gangster films, and bloody violence, Kitano showcases his range of talents in ...

What separates “Zatoichi” from other swordfight movies is that the eponymous hero, played, of course, by Kitano himself, is blind. Like the many other directors of films featuring this well-known ...

Depending on who you ask, the name Takeshi "Beat" Kitano will evoke different responses. There are those who grew up on Japanese television and know him for his slapstick humor, painted-on mustaches, ...