In Akira Kurosawa's epic and existential samurai/Noh theater rendition of Shakespeare's "King Lear," a once-merciless and bloodthirsty Lord Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai) leaves his kingdom to his three sons. As Hidetora attempts to enjoy retirement in his twilight years, he is dropped into a nightmarish hell when filial squabbling and betrayal erupts. In Japanese with English subtitles.

A period film set in samurai times without a sword-wielding hero in sight, this remains one of Akira Kurosawa’s most humanistic efforts. The subject is a run-down infirmary for the poor in feudal Japan where a confident young novice physician, Dr. Noboru (Yuzo Kayama), is sent to begin his career. Expecting to visit only temporarily and then to leave to serve the Shogunate, he is infuriated to learn he must remain at the destitute hospital, which is brimming with society's dying poor, wretched and unwanted. Though he learns that the patients need him, Noboru is quick to take measures that will ensure his termination. But he is foiled at every turn by head man Dr. Kyojio (Toshiro Mifune), otherwise known as "Akahige" ("Red Beard"), whose methods and behavior are as caring and compassionate as they are unconventional and unpredictable. At times RED BEARD veers dangerously close to soap-box philosophizing and pretension. But ultimately the film earns the emotions and ideas it attempts to evoke; the young doctor's heart and mind are forever changed, and we are as enamored of Red Beard and his patients as Noboru is. In Japanese with English subtitles.

Director Akira Kurosawa’s haunting meditation on the need to “seize the day” was cited by critic Roger Ebert as his greatest film. Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura stars as Kanji Watanabe, a Tokyo bureaucrat diagnosed with stomach cancer. Hoping to find some meaning in what remains of his life, Watanabe breaks from the monotony of his job to crusade for a children’s park - a change his former coworkers struggle to understand. In Japanese with English subtitles.