I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

This instalment in the Zatoichi franchise opens by telling us that it is set during a period where Yakuza crime bosses extracted protection money from the peasantry and in turn paid money to Yamikubo the 'Boss of Bosses', AKA the Prince of Darkness. Before we meet him we see Zatoichi giving a massage to a man who buys a woman at an auction, she was reportedly the wife of a samurai. Later he rescues her but that night she sneaks off and is killed by her husband; he assumes Zatoichi has slept with her so swears to kill him. As the various bosses meet to pay tribute to Yamikubo, Zatoichi attends and offers one ryo, a deliberate insult. Yamikubo's people vote that he must be killed. His henchmen's first attempt fails so he tries something new; a instructs the beautiful Okiyo to get close to him and take his sword… but she ends up falling in love with him. She warns him not to accept Yamikubo's invitation to a festival but he attends anyway and almost meets a fiery end.This is a solid addition to the Zatoichi franchise; Yamikubo is a suitably evil main villain and the samurai bent on revenge is a good secondary antagonist. There are some great set pieces, most notably where Zatoichi fights a group of henchmen in a bath house where everybody is naked! The scene at the end where Yamikubo tries to have Zatoichi burnt alive is also pretty memorable. As well as plenty of decent action there are quite a few more comic scenes. Shintaro Katsu does a fine job in the title role one could easily believe that he really is blind. The rest of the cast are pretty good too. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to fans of the series; if you haven't seen other instalments I think this could still be enjoyed.

Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival (he doesn't actually, there's some poetic freedom in that title) is the 21st film in the series, and by this point, things have gotten beyond stale. This is actually one of the least formulaic entries in the series (it's co-written by the star Shintaro Katsu), but by now, I just don't really care that much for the stories here. It all seems like something we've already seen before.The cast in ZGttFF is comprised of several well-known faces. The mystery ronin here is played by the brooding Tatsuya Nakadai, who, as expected, gives the best performance. Peter (the transvestite from Ran and Funeral Parade of Roses) appears as a flamboyant wannabe yakuza thug. Masayuki Mori plays the diabolical blind yakuza lord who may be the most wicked villain so far, with Ko Nishimura (once more) as his henchman.But really, this entry completely failed to draw me in, and I fear that the remaining few films won't have much new to offer either. The film suffers from severe tonal dis-balance, due to which it never really finds a solid footing. There are so many sub-plots here that the main string is hard to find. Nakadai's plot is the most interesting in its depiction of a troubled, violent ronin eaten by jealousy, and there are nifty surreal flashbacks to his past. Mori's sub-plot is kind of similar in tone, but is too talky and filled with too much dead air at times, which ruins the action flick pace a bit. Then, the film takes a pseudo-romantic turn, with a young woman (who's actually a spy for the blind lord) going for Zatoichi, which I didn't care for in the least. Then there's the needless sub-plot with Peter, filled with homoerotic undertones. Then the odd touches of comedy, particularly a baffling bath-house swords-fighting scene where Zatoichi slaughters a bunch of thugs to Oriental surf music and comically struggles to cover up his junk in the process.There are quite a few good individual scenes in the movie (and I'm glad Zatoichi has hair again because the bald look really doesn't fit him), particularly the amusing fight between a bickering village couple randomly thrown into the film, but all in all this just didn't do anything for me. Not as generic as some of the other ones, but didn't feel like anything new either. As a useless side-note, this may or may not (I don't exactly remember) be the first Zatoichi film where (female, duh) boobs are shown.Highlight of the film: the bickering married couple in the village, of course.

I loved about 90% of 'Zatôichi abare-Himatsuri"--the part I didn't like and seemed unnecessary was the angry husband played by Tatsuya Nakadai. Still, because there was a lot of fresh (or reasonably fresh) material in this film, it stands as one of the better films in the series.Ichi is giving a massage to a man who is at an auction of high-priced mistresses. When an extremely beautiful woman is introduced, the place is a buzz--especially when the men are told she was the woman of a retainer (a high government official). However, Ichi being a Sir Galahad, of sorts, after the auction is over and the woman is being taken away, Ichi rescues her--though she doesn't seem all that relieved. Additionally, as soon as she is spirited away by Ichi, a crazed samurai appears and kills all the men who were transporting her--as well as her new master. The next morning, when she sneaks away from Ichi, this samurai appears and kills her as well. Then, throughout the film, this killer appears from out of no where to tell Ichi that he will kill him because he defiled his wife (which Ichi hadn't). This angry husband was a scary guy but also made little sense in the film. After a while, he seemed more like a plot device than a real person.Aside from this (and it was NOT a huge portion of the script), the film was exceptional. It seems that there's a super-boss who is incredibly rich and powerful--probably more than any Ichi had encountered before in other films. The surprise is that this boss is blind and at first he and Ichi are friends. However, the blind boss is at heart a major creep and naturally he orders Ichi's death (you'd think they'd learn and just leave Zatoichi alone).The assassination attempts help to elevate this film from the norm. The first is rather cheesy but also great fun. As Ichi is bathing in a public bath house, assassins converge and it's an all-out naked mêlée! While you see a lot of butts, it is funny seeing how the camera avoids showing any genitalia--and it's all pretty silly. When Ichi began tossing buckets on everyone's head and fighting, I must say I'd never seen a Zatoichi film like this before--and I've seen all but one of the films. The big "boss battle" at the end is also really exciting, as the blind boss uses his brain to defeat Ichi. The final scene on the island is once again unique--something you don't see in most of the Zatoichi films--where repetition is the norm.A few of the other unusual things to look for are the homosexual who falls for Ichi and tries to seduce him, the female assassin who naturally falls for Ichi instead of killing him and Ichi reading a form of Braille (which, I assume they did NOT have in Japan in the 1830s, as the country was essentially closed to foreigners and foreign influences, so they could not have known about Braille's innovation).Overall, very good. I just wish they'd hashed out the one character more or eliminated him from the film. That crazed husband just seemed crazy.

'Zatoichi At The Fire Festival' was the 21st entry in the popular martial arts series that starred Shintaro Katsu as the blind swordsman Zatoichi. This time around Zatoichi (who moonlights as a masseur) is present at a geisha auction. Later that night he rescues one of the sold women but she is unexpectedly murdered by a mysterious swordsman. We soon learn that he was the dead woman's husband and that he plans on killing Zatoichi because he believes that his wife slept with him. To complicate things further Zatoichi also makes an enemy of the local boss (a common occurrence in this series!), a blind man known as "the Prince Of Darkness" (played by Masayuki Mori who co-starred in Kurosawa's samurai classic 'Rashomon'), becomes a sort of mentor to a young, effeminate wanna-be pimp Umeji (played by Peter, who later appeared in Kurosawa's 'Ran'), and also falls in love with the beautiful Okiyo (Reiko Ohara). Whew! I'm a relative newcomer to these movies but I'm really loving them. Zatoichi is a fascinating character, shy and funny, but a killing machine when need be. This is one of the best in the series, and the standout scenes are a hilarious attempted seduction of Zatoichi by Umeji, and a killer nude fight sequence in a bathhouse. If Beat Takeshi's recent (excellent) 'Zatoichi' has whetted your appetite try some of the Katsu originals. They are immensely entertaining, and I'll bet twenty bucks that Tarantino is a BIG fan.