One of the most thrilling movie epics of all time, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai tells the story of a sixteenth-century village whose desperate inhabitants hire the eponymous warriors to protect them from invading bandits. It was voted the greatest foreign-language film in BBC's 2018 international critics' poll. Remade in Hollywood as The Magnificent Seven with Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, etc.

This vivid, visceral Macbeth adaptation, directed by Akira Kurosawa, sets Shakespeare's definitive tale of ambition and duplicity in a ghostly, fog-enshrouded landscape in feudal Japan, fusing classical Western tragedy with formal elements taken from Noh theater to create an unforgettable cinematic experience. It is considered one of the better film adaptations of the play.

The incomparable Toshiro Mifune stars in Akira Kurosawa's visually stunning and darkly comic film. To rid a terror-stricken village of corruption, wily masterless samurai Sanjuro turns a range war between two evil clans to his own advantage. Remade twice, by Sergio Leone and Walter Hill, this exhilarating genre-twister remains one of the most influential, entertaining, and yes, greatest films of all time.