Latest news with #SevenSamurai
Daily Record
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
'Best film ever made' with 100% Rotten Tomatoes score now streaming on Amazon Prime
Over 100 professional critics have hailed the 'masterpiece' as 'one of the best films ever made' and Amazon Prime subscribers can now watch it from home. A "glorious" 1956 film that boasts a flawless 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes is now streaming on Amazon Prime and Apple TV. The 208-minute epic has been praised unanimously by 102 professional critics with a near-impossible 100% rating, coupled with an audience approval of 97% based on over 50,000 reviews. Crafted by the legendary director Akira Kurosawa and unfolding within 16th-century Japan, Seven Samurai tells the tale of a destitute farming village that opts to employ seven ronin, masterless samurai, for protection against impending bandit raids after their next harvest. Kurosawa's direction is sublime, meticulously developing the story with themes of duty, sacrifice, and human connection taking centre stage, the Express reports. One critic on Rotten Tomatoes applauded the film, stating: "The glorious vigour and strength of this film is presented with such theatrical relish and flair: its energy flashes out of the screen like a sword." Another impressed reviewer praised: "Seven Samurai is one of the crown jewels of cinema, a movie that could be screened for visiting aliens in order to show what the art form can achieve." Yet another fan remarked: "Kurosawa's epic adventure masterpiece is one of the best films ever made." A fourth branded it as "among the best of the best action films". Somebody else acknowledged: "Although Kurosawa blends the styles of Japanese cinema with Western sensibilities, the buildup of suspense is approached in near complete contrast to that of modern movies." Guided by the experienced and wise Kambei, the film follows the village as the samurai readies them for combat by strengthening the village and training them in warfare. Despite initial frictions, an unexpected alliance starts to take shape and as the bandits reappear, a series of tactical and fiercely contested battles unfold. Seven Samurai is not the only title to recently be added to Amazon Prime with an impressive Rotten Tomatoes score. The streaming platform has also finally added what's been dubbed by viewers as the 'best horror movie of 2024' and described as a 'masterclass in suspense'. Heretic, which boasts a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, appeared on the platform's coming soon list over a month ago and it's finally here. The plot follows two young missionaries who become trapped in a deadly game of cat and mouse when they knock on the door of the diabolical Mr. Reed, played by British actor Hugh Grant. Stuck in his home, they must turn to their faith if they want to make it out alive. The movie caused quite a stir when it was released in cinemas last year, as it stars Hugh Grant in a very different role to his usual on screen portrayals. Grant's impressive performance earned him a BAFTA 2025 nomination for Best Leading Actor.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Highest 2 Lowest' Review: Denzel Washington Finds A Great Role And A$AP Rocky Finds A New Career In Spike Lee's Entertaining Kidnap Drama
Yet again a filmmaker has gone to the throne of Japanese giant Akira Kurosawa for inspiration. Among the lauded director's films Hollywood has turned into English-language adaptations are Seven Samurai, which became The Magnificent Seven twice (including once with Denzel Washington); Rashomon, which became Paul Newman's The Outrage; Ikiru, remade a few years ago as Living; Yojimbo, which led to an uncredited inspiration for A Fistful of Dollars; and 1958's Hidden Fortress, unquestionably an inspiration for George Lucas and Star Wars. Now chalk up another one with Spike Lee's new take on Kurosawa's 1963 drama High and Low, in which Toshiro Mifune played a shoemaker executive who is torn between paying the ransom to his chauffeur's son's kidnapper after the criminal nabbed him by mistake instead of the executive's son, who was safe. It becomes a moral dilemma, especially as the exec really needs the money himself to save his business. What would you do, it asks? More from Deadline Cannes Film Festival 2025 In Photos: Wes Anderson, Guillermo del Toro, 'The Phoenician Scheme' & 'The Richest Woman In The World'Premieres &More Cannes Film Festival 2025: Read All Of Deadline's Movie Reviews Breaking Baz @Cannes: Spike Lee Croons Rodgers & Hammerstein On The Beach But Tunes Out As Talk Turns To Him Making A Movie Musical His Next Project And that is exactly the setup for Lee's thrilling and entertaining new drama Highest 2 Lowest, which has been reset to the contemporary music industry with Washington as David King aka 'King David,' a hugely successful music mogul who finds his Stackin' Hits Records is about to be taken over and now has plans to start a new label and return to the top of the charts. When his son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) and godson Kyle (Elijah Wright in a film debut) and son of his best friend and driver Paul (Jeffrey Wright) are mistaken for each other by the inept kidnapper, that criminal demands David pay the $17.5 million ransom anyway or Kyle dies. Again, what would you do? RELATED: The riveting answer to what David will do is played out in this tense cat-and-mouse game. Should he refuse, he is told social media will just destroy him anyway for the heartless act of turning his back on his friend Paul and his son who are definitely living on a wildly different class level than the Kings do. But David is torn. He is convinced that a return to the top of the heap is imminent and all he needs is the money. Why give it up for someone else's child? His wife Pam (IIfenesh Hadera) is distraught at first, thinking the guy had their son, but now has definite ideas of her own about how to proceed. There's also a trio of NYPD detectives on the case (Dean Winters, LaChanze, John Douglas Thompson). The tension mounts as they try to lure the kidnapper, who slyly barks his demands and tries to one-up David in some phone encounters. Will they be able to trace the calls? Can they find him? Who is he? RELATED: Well, it turns out to be a guy whose life's dream was to be discovered by King David and handed a contract for Stackin' Hits as the next great rapper. His name in Yung Felon, and he is played in a sensational supporting turn by A$AP Rocky, whose romantic partner Marisol (Isis 'Ice Spice' Gaston) might hold the key to finding him. RELATED: The first film shot in Lee's native NYC in more than a decade is one of his best. It has been in various forms of development over 30 years for the likes of David Mamet, Chris Rock and others, and now Washington helped get Lee on board with it for a new take from screenwriter Alan Fox, who adapts material from Ed McBain's book King's Ransom and the original Kurosawa movie. The premise fits like a glove with the music industry, and Washington is smooth as silk, delivering one of his best recent performances as a man caught in an impossible moral quandary. With his fifth collaboration with Lee (Malcolm X, He Got Game, Inside Man, Mo Better Blues), he really finds his groove on this one to be sure. His initial showdown in the recording studio through the music producer's glass window as Yung Felon is putting down a track is worth the price of admission, with Washington turning the encounter into a bravura rap that becomes one of the actor's finest screen moments. A$AP Rocky, who was seen in the film Monsters, proves he can go toe-to-toe with Washington and shows he has dramatic chops to shine here. Wright as always is superb, as is Hadera. RELATED: As is the case with most Lee joints, this one has a superb, soaring musical score from Howard Drossin that really feels NYC to its core. Matthew Libatique's sharp cinematography also shows off New York City to its full potential here. The film had its world premiere Monday night Out of Competition at the Cannes Film Festival, where Lee debuted his masterpiece Do the Right Thing 36 years ago today. Producers are Todd Black and Jason Michael Berman. Title: Highest 2 LowestFestival: Cannes (Out of Competition)Distributors: A24 Films and Apple Original FilmsRelease date: August 22, 2025Director: Spike LeeScreenwriter: Alan FoxCast: Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, IIfenesh Hadera, Aubrey Joseph, A$AP Rocky, Dean Winters, La Chanze, John Douglas Thompson, Isis 'Ice Spice' Gaston, Michael Potts, Rick Fox, Elijah WrightRating: RRunning time: 2 hr 14 min Best of Deadline Broadway's 2024-2025 Season: All Of Deadline's Reviews Sundance Film Festival U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize Winners Through The Years Deadline Studio At Sundance Film Festival Photo Gallery: Dylan O'Brien, Ayo Edebiri, Jennifer Lopez, Lily Gladstone, Benedict Cumberbatch & More
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Adam Duritz: ‘It's My World and I Love It'
'Connection is a hell of a thing…it's the life jacket we all need,' says Adam Duritz, frontman of Counting Crows, a band that's built their 30-year career through heartfelt live performances, emotional lyrics, and recurring, world-building themes in their songs. Ironic, then, that growing up, Duritz says he didn't know how to make connections with other people. 'When I was younger, I was so stuck inside myself,' he tells me from his New York City home. A bunch of movie posters plaster the wall behind him—Seven Samurai and Smokey and the Bandit among them. He's wearing a black Raspberries T-shirt, and sports a full black beard and a head full of dark brown hair, albeit thinner and shorter than the dreadlocks he was known for back in the '90s. More from Spin: 5 Albums I Can't Live Without: Paul Leary of Butthole Surfers Pearl Jam Welcome Peter Frampton For 'Black' In Nashville Lorde Lays Out Extensive 'Virgin' Tour Plans 'I had all this stuff I felt, and no way to express it or no way to connect with people because I didn't talk to people very well, and I didn't have any way to make connections. I felt so bound up inside myself.' It wasn't until later in life that he discovered he was suffering from depersonalization disorder, a condition that makes him feel emotionally detached from his surroundings, and even himself, which can last from minutes to sometimes months. Imagine feeling like you are seeing yourself from outside of your own body, or that everything around you is not real, and you don't know how to stop it; that's how Duritz feels a lot of the time. It can be a lonely existence Duritz's father served in the military during the Vietnam War and later became a doctor, which meant the family moved around a lot, only adding to his sense of isolation. 'It really separates you from the world in a lot of bad ways,' Duritz says. 'I was always a new kid. I didn't know people. I really had a lot of questions when I was younger, and I knew something was wrong with me. How am I going to take care of myself? How am I going to live a life? I didn't really know how any of this was going to work.' While he was in college, Duritz discovered, rather spontaneously, that he could write songs and play them. 'Good Morning, Little Sister' was the first song he ever wrote, about his younger sister who was going through a difficult time as a teenager. For the first time in his life, he says he had a sense of self, of who he was: He was a songwriter. 'I had a feeling there was all this stuff inside me that mattered, that was important, but it just was there, like a big ball of feeling,' he says. 'And then I write songs, and suddenly it's this way that connects me to the whole world, and all the things inside me that were stuck because the mental illness had a purpose.' Then, in 1993, two years after forming the Counting Crows with producer-guitarist David Bryson, the band—which by then consisted of Matt Malley on bass, drummer Steve Bowman, and on keyboards, Charlie Gillingham—exploded onto the music scene with its multi-platinum breakout album, August and Everything After. Then, in 1996, the group's sophomore album, Recovering the Satellites, debuted at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart, going double platinum. The Counting Crows has released a number of live albums and compilations over the years, as well as five studio records, including its latest, Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!, the band's first in seven years. As Duritz describes it, the new record is 'so rock and roll.' Not to be confused with the band's 2021 EP, Butter Miracle: Suite One, Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets! is a sequel of sorts to its predecessor. Duritz tells me he wrote Suite One as a challenge to himself, to see if he could write one long-playing, continuous piece of music. The result was, well, a suite of four songs: 'The Tall Grass,' 'Elevator Boots,' 'Angel of 14th Street,' and 'Bobby and the Rat-Kings.' But it was also his answer to how people listen to music now. 'I don't know if anyone's listening to whole records,' says Duritz. 'People are digesting music in different ways anyway, so to me, it felt like since I was moved to challenge myself to make this 20-minute piece of music where the songs all flow together, it was just that, you know? But I really loved how it turned out. I thought well, it does make sense to make another half to this, though.' The Complete Sweets includes remixed versions of the songs on Suite One, along with five new songs, including the band's latest singles, 'Spaceman in Tulsa' and 'Under the Aurora.' But the road to get there wasn't so easy. Going back to his friend's farm in West England, where he wrote Suite One, Duritz composed the other half of the album and on his way home, he stopped in London to sing backing vocals on the Gang of Youths' album, Angel in Realtime. When the band sent him the finished product, he thought it was one of the best records he had heard in a long time. 'I was so blown away listening to it, and I had this realization that these songs on their record were significantly better than the stuff I'd written,' he says. 'The stuff lacked a sort of passion that these songs had and they were missing something, and I needed to go back to the drawing board.' So, that's what he did. And through the process of reworking his new songs, Duritz pushed himself like he'd never done before. 'I'd never really had this experience before of thinking I'd finished something and then realizing it wasn't good enough,' he tells me. 'They were a little more ambitious musically, to the point where I couldn't play them myself. Usually, I can tell a song is good because I can just play it for myself. But these were really difficult for me to play. I had them in my head, but I couldn't recreate them.' As much as he loved his new material, he lacked the confidence to share it with the rest of the band. So he sat on it for two years. Then a breakthrough happened. He wrote 'With Love, from A-Z.' 'I knew that was great. I loved that song,' he says. 'And it felt like, in a way, an updating of 'Round Here.' Whereas that's a real statement of a person and where they are in life, just as a kid getting ready to go out into the world and make something. And to me, 'With Love, from A-Z' was a statement of where I am today. And I really felt it worked and it was very powerful.' With a renewed sense of confidence, Duritz invited band members David Immerglück (guitar), Jim Bogios (drums), and Millard Powers (bass) to his house to play his new songs. Two weeks later, along with the rest of the group, Duritz ripped through the tracks in the studio in 11 days. Then, together with Chad Blake, the Counting Crows mixed the new songs, combining them with the remixed Suite One tracks, making a complete, nine-track LP. 'So the Suite [One] sounds different now than it did originally because we remade it to match the first half,' he says. 'The two pieces fit together really well. It was a different experience…' While the title of the album, Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!, has a bit of a nonsensical tone to it, the themes that run through it are quite serious and incredibly relevant to what's going on in America now. 'Boxcars,' for instance, is about the deportation of immigrants. 'Under the Aurora' was inspired by the murder of George Floyd during the pandemic. Other songs cover the objectification of women and trans kids in sports. 'A lot of the stuff on this record is about people in isolation and people on the outside looking in, finding ways to get through life. Sometimes it works out because we can pick up a guitar,' says Duritz, referring to himself. Duritz says that after more than 30 years together, he and the band are still fascinated with the process of making music, exploring new ways to perform older songs live, never replicating the same old playlists during their shows, and, as with the group's new album, finding new ways to write songs. 'We enjoy playing music,' he says. 'I love being in a band. I don't want to be a solo artist. I like the jazz of being in a band. I think we matter to each other. I've watched my friends fuck up great bands. I don't want to do that. There are a million ways to justify why things should fall apart. You just have to decide whether that's okay to let it happen.' The musical landscape is a lot different than when August and Everything After debuted, when the only option to hear it was to buy the album at the record store or borrow (or copy) it from a friend. Exposure meant getting a single played on the radio or creating a music video for MTV. The rise of streaming music, of course, has changed all of that; it's all the music you want, anytime you want, making it more difficult for artists to stay relevant, to build a fanbase, to connect with an audience. The Counting Crows are still passionate about being in a rock 'n roll band. 'I'm 30-some-odd years into a career here; a career that lasts five minutes for most people, if it even happens,' Duritz says. 'And we're still a band and we're still going on tour. And it's still cool. There are bands that are bigger and, it's not effortless, but it's still happening. That thing that saved me when I was a kid is still saving me now. It's my world, and I love it.' To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
