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Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

Play trailer Poster for Akira Kurosawa's Dreams PG 1990 1h 59m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
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67% Tomatometer 30 Reviews 86% Popcornmeter 10,000+ Ratings
This imaginative Japanese production presents a series of short films by lauded director Akira Kurosawa. In one chapter, a young boy spies on foxes that are holding a wedding ceremony; the following installment features another youth, who witnesses a magical moment in an orchard. In the segment "Crows," an aspiring artist enters the world of a painting and encounters Vincent van Gogh (Martin Scorsese). Many of the films in this inventive movie are tied together by an environmental theme.
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Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

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Critics Consensus

This late-career anthology by Akira Kurosawa often confirms that Dreams are more interesting to the dreamer than their audience, but the directorial master still delivers opulent visions with a generous dose of heart.

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Critics Reviews

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Mark Le Fanu Sight & Sound 01/16/2020
For all its expensive production values, simplicity of emotion seems to be the keynote -- as it was in Shakespeare's last plays. Go to Full Review
Terrence Rafferty The New Yorker 03/04/2013
There's greatness in the film's first hour. Go to Full Review
Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader 02/09/2007
In the uneven career of Akira Kurosawa, two limiting factors were sentimentality and preachiness, and both come to the fore in this 1990 collection of eight dreams. Go to Full Review
Bill DuPre News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) 10/18/2023
3.5/4
The technique... allows the images to rattle through the viewer's mind like a transcendent line of poetry; these images are so intense and stay on the screen for such a time that the viewer's interpretation of them becomes introspective and personal. Go to Full Review
Matt Brunson Film Frenzy 05/31/2023
3/4
Kurosawa is content to offer a series of fractured musings. Go to Full Review
Rene Jordan El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 12/01/2022
Even the exalted defenders of "Dreams" have a hard time justifying this pair of abominable spawn. [Full review in Spanish] Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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V H Dec 28 Drama, suspense, choreography and costume mesmerizing -such beauty in color, character, movement and emotion! Eight vignettes -dreams of Kurosawa’s. All quite different—childhood, guilt, death are but three. Be prepared for a long movie. My only negative is it tends to be somewhat lecturing…could the English translation be one reason?? Highly recommend. See more Greg B 03/23/2024 One of my favorite movies of all time! I love the artistry, cinematography, and the eclectic stories of this film! By watching this film, I was able to understand the sensibilities of Kurosama-Sensei's generation. Elements are very much embedded in Japanese folklore. Others are fantastical tales of survivors guilt after WWII. Or stepping into the world of a painting to talk with the master painter. Love of nature, and the wish to preserve it. Fear of nuclear energy, the abuse of it, and the repercussions of it. I watch this film at least once a year. See more NICOLE W @NWOPW 11/22/2023 This movie had amazing visuals and riveting stories. The audience score is accurate, in that if one chooses to watch this movie, there is some self-selection, and one is more likely to rate it higher. And it delivers. See more Desmond B 05/14/2023 Dreams is a sumptuous, thoughtful, dramatic, film from which I found it hard to look away. Although it is one of Kurosawa's last films, it shows him at the height of his power and creativity, and offers a glimpse into his mind, just as he glimpses the mind of van Gogh. My review is at https://thecannibalguy.com/2023/05/14/dreams-1990/ See more william d @acsdoug 10/11/2022 There are some very beautiful images here. However, just like dreams in real life, the stories are haphazard, uninteresting to the outside observer, and ultimately inconsequential. See more Michael M 09/07/2021 While not Kurosawa's best work and certainly not his most accessible, this anthology is nothing if not interesting. Each vignette has a distinctive and often gorgeous aesthetic, and while the writing is uneven (the final story, "Village of the Water Mills", feels like a polemic for luddism), the film captures the hallucinatory quality of half-remembered dreams extremely effectively. The cameo by Martin Scorsese in what I consider to be the film's best segment ("Crows") also made the film worth watching - seeing a collaboration between the two directors, even this minor, is something of a dream come true. See more Read all reviews
Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

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Movie Info

Synopsis This imaginative Japanese production presents a series of short films by lauded director Akira Kurosawa. In one chapter, a young boy spies on foxes that are holding a wedding ceremony; the following installment features another youth, who witnesses a magical moment in an orchard. In the segment "Crows," an aspiring artist enters the world of a painting and encounters Vincent van Gogh (Martin Scorsese). Many of the films in this inventive movie are tied together by an environmental theme.
Director
Akira Kurosawa, Ishirô Honda
Producer
Mike Y. Inoue, Hisao Kurosawa
Distributor
Warner Bros. Pictures
Production Co
Akira Kurosawa USA
Rating
PG
Genre
Drama
Original Language
Japanese
Release Date (Theaters)
Aug 24, 1990, Wide
Release Date (Streaming)
Jan 1, 2008
Box Office (Gross USA)
$1.7M
Runtime
1h 59m
Sound Mix
Dolby, Surround
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