Dreams (1990)

Wisely marketed by Netflix as "Akira Kurosawa's Dreams," this is my first anthology viewing since...well, another Kurosawa piece. It's also from later in his career than anything else I've seen. I figured I'd like it better than Dodes'ka-den, partly because dreams are bound to be at least close to fantasy.

There are eight stories, generally set in 20th-century Japan. In "Sunshine Through the Rain," a young boy ignores his mother's warning not to go into the woods on a day with the titular weather, because kitsune have weddings then and don't brook human witnesses. In "The Peach Orchard," another boy, missing the peach trees that his family clearcut, sees their strangely human-shaped spirits. In "The Blizzard," four mountain climbers are on the verge of succumbing, possibly to the yuki-onna, before reaching their camp. In "The Tunnel," a former WWII commander walks through a tunnel and meets the ghosts of men who died following his orders and don't know it yet. In "Crows," a budding artist imagines(?) himself meeting an anglophone Vincent van Gogh (Martin Scorsese!) in France and traversing the scenes of several paintings. In "Mount Fuji in Red," a nuclear meltdown rapidly depopulates the volcanic area, with most people deciding they'd rather drown than face cancer. In "The Weeping Demon," on another mountain, radioactivity has effectively turned humans into demons in a Buddhist hell. And in "Village of the Waterfalls," a traveler discovers a contented Luddite village.

The Irishman (2019)

I knew I wasn't going to love this. Martin Scorsese fare is rarely even moderately enjoyable to me. But it is one of the most championed contenders for Academy Best Picture this year, and as a Netflix original, it's already available for streaming. I started early in the evening, because at 209 minutes, it's the longest mainstream feature in decades.

Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a Philadelphia trucker, gets into '50s organized crime, including "painting houses" with the blood of the homeowners, despite quiet disapproval by his wife and daughter (played in adulthood by Anna Paquin). After helping him escape a charge, his defense attorney (Ray Romano) introduces him to crime lord Russell Buffalino (an oddly placid Joe Pesci), who in turn connects him with Teamsters Union pres Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). Sheeran and Hoffa stay close for about 20 years, which is not a particularly good thing when the latter is infamous....

Mean Streets (1973)

Martin Scorsese is one of those people whose works I check out almost entirely because he's popular, not because I like his track record. It's a matter of cultural education. This time, I opted to check out his earliest collaboration with Robert De Niro and arguably his first hit feature.

Both IMDb and Netflix summarize the plot as a minor crook, Charlie (Harvey Keitel), working his way up the mob ladder, but that's not what I recall. Netflix adds that he's in Little Italy (no points for guessing which city) and dating a woman with epilepsy, Teresa (Amy Robinson), whom we never see having a seizure, but her condition is important insofar as other mobsters wouldn't approve the relationship. Neither summary mentions De Niro's character of Johnny Boy, who's a cousin to Teresa, a buddy to Charlie, and a debtor to dangerous men.

Mifune: The Last Samurai (2015)

I had seen Toshirō Mifune in a dozen films, only one of them not directed by Akira Kurosawa. Even when he's not the main character, he has a habit of capturing our attention. So I accepted the Meetup invitation to a documentary about him, tho my dad declined.

Actually, this isn't entirely about Mifune. Before getting into even his parentage and infancy (with cute photos care of his professional photographer dad), the doc presents the earliest history of motion pictures in Japan, with a focus on silent, Noh-inspired samurai shorts. I'm somewhat impressed that clips survive in any capacity. Late in the doc, we learn a little about the career of Kurosawa in the absence of Mifune.

After Hours (1985)

After my semi-success with The King of Comedy, I decided to give another Martin Scorsese black comedy a shot. In a way, it's the opposite: Where the former bothered and discouraged the director, the latter was just the pick-me-up he needed after his initial failure to launch The Last Temptation of Christ. It must have been especially rewarding to writer Joseph Minion, who had never sold a feature script before.

Paul (Griffin Dunne) leads a dull existence as a word processor, until he happens to meet and bond with the attractive Marcy (Rosanna Arquette). He decides to meet her again at her home in SoHo, a long cab ride from his place. His misfortune begins on that ride when his only paper money flies out the window (remember, there were no ATMs in those days) and mounts as he learns more about Marcy than he wanted to know. For the rest of the night/movie, he just wants to go home, but the obstacles keep piling on, eventually to dangerous levels. Way to make a dull existence look good.

The King of Comedy (1982)

When a movie title itself speaks of humor, it's usually serious. The only exception I can think of is A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Netflix calls this Martin Scorsese piece a black comedy, but I think it works best if you go in expecting a drama with some thriller elements.

Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) badly wants to do guest stand-up on the late-night show of Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis in his 50s, basically as himself). His aggressive tactics get Jerry to mildly encourage further communication, but as we'd all suspect, it's just a polite way to send him off. About halfway in, Rupert and his...well, not friend and certainly not girlfriend...comrade-in-obsession Masha (Sandra Bernhardt) abduct Jerry in order to demand a ten-minute opening act. Rupert knows he'll go to prison for it, but to his mind, even fleeting stardom is worth it.