One of Akira Kurosawa’s greatest masterpieces and one of my favourite movies Rashômon is now available as a free download at the Internet Archive.
Rashômon has been a gateway film to many people who have not previously dared to face the prospect of watching a half-century old black & white movie in Japanese. It is said that this film is the very reason why the The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences created the Best Foreign Film Oscar category.
Japan 1950, 88min
Genre: Crime, drama, mystery
Japanese with English subtitles
Starring: Toshirô Mifune, Machiko Kyô, Takashi Shimura, Masayuki Mori
Good reasons for not watching: blindness, death
From IMDB trivia: “Kurosawa found that the rain in the background simply wouldn’t show up against the light gray backdrop. To solve this problem, the crew ended up tinting the rain by pouring black ink into the tank of the rain machine”