YOJIMBO

Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Starring Toshiro Mifune

(1961) “You can’t get ahead in this world unless folks think you’re both a cheat and killer.” Met at the entrance to a deserted village by a stray mutt sauntering past with a severed hand in its jaws, grubby, wandering and unemployed ronin Mifune, after a suitable double take, realizes a skilled yojimbo (bodyguard) could rake in the ryo in this town. And after checking out the sake merchant’s thugs squaring off against the silk merchant’s goon squad, twice as much, if he hires out to both sides. Venice Festival acting prize to Mifune; with Tatsuya Nakadai as the pistol-waking killer. Spaghetti-Western fans take note: the plagiarism suit against Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars was settled out of court. 35mm. Approx. 110 mins.
12:30, 4:20, 8:20

“Their confrontations are like a face-off between John Wayne and Elvis Presley.”
– Stuart Gailbraith

“Kurosawa has made the first great shaggy-man movie. Yojimbo is a glorious comedy-satire of force: the story of a bodyguard who kills the bodies he is hired to guard.”
– Pauline Kael

DJANGO

(1966, Sergio Corbucci) Enter horseless, dark-clad, blazingly blue-eyed Franco Nero dragging a coffin through the inches-thick mud of a crummy town, seemingly populated only by whores and a bartender – and fought over by bandidos and red-hooded clansmen. Nero’s starmaking role, and the original of 30+ official and unofficial sequels. But what’s that in the coffin? DCP. Approx. 92 mins.
2:35, 6:30, 10:25

“RELENTLESS, SURREALISTICALLY CRUEL AND CRAZY! A film I’ve seen several times – IT NEVER DISSAPOINTS”
– Alex Cox

“One of the daddies of the spaghetti/paella Western. It’s a clean-up-and-paint-the-town-blood-red revenge drama with a difference. Enough mud-wrestling prostitutes, whippings, ear-loppings, explosions and scenes of wholesale slaughter to keep any muchacho happy.”
– Time Out (London)