This weeklong festival of Japanese action films, screening in new prints, runs Friday through Thursday, March 3 through 9, at the Music Box, 3733 N. Southport. Tickets for each film are $9.25, $8.25 for the first screening on Monday through Thursday. For more information call 773-871-6604.
Samurai leader Toshiro Mifune conducts his princess, Misa Uehara, across a war-torn landscape to safety in a casual, often satiric action film directed by Akira Kurosawa. The princess turns out to be a tough, imperious wench, the samurai is perceived as a cunning manipulator, and the foreground is taken over by two quarrelsome, grubbing peasants. George Lucas says he lifted the plot of Star Wars from this 1958 production, which remains the only Kurosawa film unburdened by a need to make art. In Japanese with subtitles. 139 min. (DK) a Wed 3/8, 7:10 PM
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Samurai Saga
Tatsuya Nakadai as a princely swordsman whose obsession with his craft threatens to turn into madness. Kihachi Okamoto directed this 1966 feature; with Toshiro Mifune. In Japanese with subtitles. 119 min. a Sun 3/5, 4:20 and 9:20 PM, and Mon 3/6, 5 and 9:50 PM
