At the end of the Heian period, Musashibo Benkei, a warrior monk who hated the Heike clan, was humiliated by his fellow monks and left the mountain monastery. Soon, Benkei competes with the Heike warriors on the Gojo Bridge in Kyoto and takes away their swords. One night he tried to stop a young man who had a beautiful sword on his belt and fought him, but he could not win. Knowing that this young man Ushiwakamaru (Minamoto no Yoshitsune) is looking for an opportunity to overthrow the Heike clan, Benkei asks him to let him join him.
A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with food.
Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an aging warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons.
Saotome Mondonosuke is Hatamoto (a high-class warrior who is allowed to see the Shogun in person) who has a crescent-moon-shaped scar on his forehead with flashy clothes and a handsome face, and is proficient in all the military arts and called Bored Hatamoto.
A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade.
In this film, Hibari plays a dual role as brother and sister. The story involves a journey to Hanagasa for an incognito Lord (Kotaro Satomi) to overthrow an attempted usurpation of his domain, while being harassed by vassals of the usurper (Kensaku Hara).
Kotani Zenzaemon, a ronin who has a side job making brushes in a tenement house in the back alley, is watching Omine, who lives with him, from Kichizo, a resident of the same tenement house and a boatman.
In this companion piece and sequel to "Yojimbo," jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan's evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a proper samurai on its ear.
Seibei Iguchi leads a difficult life as a low ranking samurai at the turn of the nineteenth century. A widower with a meager income, Seibei struggles to take care of his two daughters and senile mother.
During the latter part of the 16th Century, Japan's Warring States era was coming to a close. After crushing almost all of his enemies, Date Masamune aka the "Hawk of the North" sets his eyes on Hatakeyama's lands.
Takahashi Hideki stars as Muyonosuke, the one-eyed ronin who makes his living as a bounty hunter who is on a never-ending quest to find the man who murdered his father.
Popular movie trailers from 1997
These some of the most viewed trailers for movies released in 1997:
Will Hunting is a headstrong, working-class genius who is failing the lessons of life. After one too many run-ins with the law, Will's last chance is a psychology professor, who might be the only man who can reach him.
A story about Boyong, the master barber, and Apolinario, Boyong's nephew and apprentice. They man their shabby barbershop, dreaming of hitting the big time someday.
After a police chase with an otherworldly being, a New York City cop is recruited as an agent in a top-secret organization established to monitor and police alien activity on Earth: the Men in Black.
Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, two of England's most important World War I poets are sent, along with other traumatized combatants, to a rest home in order to treat their emotional troubles, caused by the psychological fatigue that suffer the soldiers fighting in the no man's land.
Hailed by some as a cinematic genius, a feminist voice and a true maverick of American cinema, dismissed by others as a voyeuristic fraud and the "world's worst director," Henry Jaglom obsessively confuses and abuses the line between life and art.
HBO (in association with the American Film Institute) presents this 1997 anthology, narrated by Liev Schreiber, which looks at sports in cinema from the earliest silent films until the nineties.
