Love and Honor.

"Veteran filmmaker Yôji Yamada closes his thematic trilogy about the last samurai and the end of traditional values with Love and Honor (2006), the most melodramatic of the three films," writes Simon Abrams in the New York Press. "While its predecessors - The Twilight Samurai (2002) and The Hidden Blade (2004) - were about newfound responsibilities and blossoming love in a bygone era, Love and Honor is about the marital winter that follows autumnal courtship. Think Away From Her except with samurai instead of Oscar-baiting old folks."

"Ostensibly, this is a samurai film but, with its changing-seasons-as-metaphor, as well as its teary close-ups, Yamada's latest owes as much to Douglas Sirk as Akira Kurosawa," writes Henry Stewart in the L Magazine.

At the Pioneer in New York through Thursday before moving on to the Angelika in Houston and Dallas.

Posted by dwhudson at August 3, 2008 5:35 AM