Shakespeare and samurai

A late-career triumph for Akira Kurosawa, “Ran” (1985) earned the Japanese director his only Academy Award nomination and showed that at 75, he could still direct the kind of epic battle sequences that could make a lesser director suffer a breakdown. The film adapts Shakespeare’s “King Lear” to feudal Japan, replacing the European royalty with that old Kurosawa standby: samurai.

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-- Patrick Day

New Beverly Cinema

7165 Beverly Blvd., L.A.

8 tonight

(323) 938-4038