Sharaku (1995) Masahiro Shinoda, Hiroyuki Sanada, Furankî Sakai, Shima Iwashita

“Quite simply one of the greatest of filmmakers,” said Jean-Luc Godard of Kenji Mizoguchi. And Ugetsu, a ghost story like no other, is surely the Japanese director’s supreme achievement. Derived from stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Maupassant, this haunting tale of love and loss—with its exquisite blending of the otherworldly and the real—is one of the most beautiful films ever made.

In Japan, this 1978 film was originally titled Kichiku, which, as the liner notes indicate, "is made up of the Japanese characters for 'demon' and 'livestock'." The initial disparity between those two words largely vanishes when watching what western audiences know as The Demon, a title that may at first bring to mind some kind of flaky horror film, full of badly latexed monsters and demonic possession. The reality of the matter is that The Demon is indeed a horror film of sorts, but one that is filled with the scariest monster of all: Man.

The film begins in the summer of 1876, introducing Captain Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), a disenchanted ex-United States Army captain and an alcoholic, who is traumatized by his experience fighting in the Civil War and the Indian Wars. In the years following his army service, Algren makes his living by relating war stories to gun show…

Seibei Iguchi, a low-ranking samurai, leads a life without glory as a bureaucrat in the mid-XIX century Japan. A widower, he has charge of two daughters (whom he adores) and a senile mother; he must therefore work in the fields and accept piecework to make ends meet. New prospects seem to open up when Tomoe, his long-time love, divorces a brutal husband. However, even as the Japanese feudal system is unraveling, Seibei remains bound by the code of honour of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedences. The consequences are cruel.

Keanu Reeves è il protagonista nella parte di Kai, un emarginato che si unisce ad Oishi (Hiroyuki Sanada), il leader dei 47 Ronin. Insieme cercano la vendetta sul tiranno Signore che ha ucciso il loro Maestro, bandendo i suoi seguaci guerrieri. Per restituire l'onore al loro feudo, i guerrieri si troveranno ad affrontare delle dure prove per distruggere gli ordinari guerrieri.

Based in part on a six-volume novel by Junpei Gomikawa and, in part, on Kobayashi's own wartime experiences as a pacifist trying to survive in the Japanese army, The Human Condition is as grand in scale and scope as that other anti-war classic, Gone With the Wind. Like the South, Japan lost a war and can't stop talking about it. Every great Japanese director has a movie about the traumas of WWII under his belt, but none is as ambitious as The Human Condition.

This post contains all the extras from Disc 4. This includes several 'hidden scenes' - entertaining out-takes of interviews with Tatsuya Nakadai and Masahiro Shinoda not accessible from the main DVD menu. These hidden VOBs were discovered during the ripping process. Also included are trailers of all three double-features, and DVD Menu screenshots from all four discs.

The legendary samurai Sasuke Sarutobi tracks the spy Nojiri, while a mysterious figure named Sakon leads a band of men on their own quest for the wily Nojiri. Soon no one knows just who is who and what side anyone is on.