Stalker is a 1979 post apocalyptic movie by Andrei Tarkovsky. It’s regarded as being one of the best movies ever made by critics, having a perfect score on rotten tomatoes. That being said, although I’m probably in the minority on this one, I really didn’t like or enjoy the movie.

Stalker takes place in the unspecified near future in an unspecified country. In this country, a meteor landed, and created something known as “the zone.” People are forbidden from going into the zone, as it’s apparently incredibly dangerous. However, within the zone, there is a place called the room, which is said to grant your deepest desire in life once you reach it. Specialized people called stalkers illegally take people into the zone to reach the room so that they can fulfill their wishes. The movie’s premise is that a stalker is hired by a writer and scientist to guide them.

This scenario is incredibly interesting, and I was looking forward to seeing all the dangers the zone had to offer. But instead of seeing monsters, or hallucinations, or literally anything scary, the only thing the zone ever does in the film is make the writer imagine the scientist called him. That’s it. Nothing else happens in this film. The rest of the movie is incredibly slow and revolves around monologues about life, religion, and choice. Now, I’d be fine with monologues and themes in my movie, and I’m also fine with movies being slow, however I’d also like something, literally anything to happen. Stalker’s just too full of itself and trying to be ponderous, that it forgets to also be a movie.

The problems I have with stalker are essentially the same problems that I have with 2001. Both are trying to make a statement, although it’s not clear what about, and both in the process of trying to make their statement end up compromising their own movie. Perhaps this is just me, as both of these are incredibly praised films, but really, what the heck is the ending of 2001? And what is stalker trying to say? Just because a movie tries to say a message, doesn’t automatically mean it succeeds. Interestingly enough, both of these films have modern movies that take inspiration from and emulate them, but in my opinion do so even better. Interstellar, takes a lot of ideas from 2001, but in addition to having a clearer ending, and more fleshed our characters. Recently, the movie Annihilation came out, and it’s clearly borrowing a lot of ideas from stalker. However, unlike stalker, annihilation actually shows the terrors of it’s zone. The result is that annihilation has some truly horrifying scenes, like the bear scene in particular, and that scare-factor is something stalker so clearly wants to impart, but simply fails to.

Not everything is bad in stalker however. Some of the cinematography is truly unique, such as one rotating shot where the audience can’t tell what direction up or down is. There are also some great scenes, such as the ending scene where the stalker’s daughter is revealed to have psychic powers, or the tunnel scene, where due to good sound design and tight camera angles, the audience feels very claustrophobic and compressed. Sadly, that’s really all I can think of that redeems this movie

In case it wasn’t clear, I really didn’t like this movie. This could just be me acting like an uncultured philistine, but I can’t recommend this film, it’s not good or deep; it’s just overrated.

I absolutely love samurai movies, and no I don’t mean weird Netflix movies about ninjas. I mean good, classic, samurai movies. Harakiri perfectly encompasses and exemplifies all traits of good samurai movies, and for that reason, I believe it’s the best samurai movie out there.

Harakiri was a type of ritualistic suicide that samurai committed in order to preserve their honor with their death. The movie takes place towards the end of the age of the samurai, in the 17th century. At this point the samurai clans are beginning to die out. A retainer from a dead clan named Motome shows up on the Li clan door asking to commit Harakiri in their courtyard, so he could die as a samurai. However, it is revealed that he actually had no intention of going through with the suicide, and that he was actually hoping for a job with the Li clan. After being found out he is forced to commit Hara-Kiri by the Li clan. Months later, and older samurai named Hanshiro (played by Tatsuya Nakadai) appears to the Li clan, and just like Motome, claims to want to commit Hara-Kiri. The plot has many twists and turns, and almost feels like a whodunnit, in that it maintains an air of mystery throughout the movie.

The acting in this movie is fantastic. In particular, Tatsuya Nakadai and Akira Ishihama as Hanshiro and Motome. Both are excellent in their roles. Ishihama in particular, as he has to act an incredibly hard scene. I’m not going to spoil it, but suffice to say it must have been just as hard to film as it is to watch. The combat in this movie is few and far between, however both the duel near the cemetery and the final battle of the movie are both incredible thanks to Nakadai’s acting, as well as this movies cinematography. In fact, the cinematography in Harakiri is perhaps one of it’s greatest assets. Some shots in this movie are downright jaw dropping. The final duel especially, virtually every shot could win an award.

There really isn’t much I can say against this movie. The only thing I can think of is that it’s a little slow in the beginning, with most action and combat occurring later in the film. However, if you’re watching a samurai movie and you can’t handle slow movies, you’re in the wrong genre.

Overall Harakiri, while not my all time personal favorite samurai, is probably in my opinion simply the best samurai movie ever made. If you can get through some of the incredibly tough-to-watch scenes, then you’ll find that you’re watching a masterpiece.