My next film screening at 92YTribeca is going to be another good one, an underseen classic of Japanese cinema: It’s called “Kill!”, and it’s not as violent as it sounds (though it does have a lot of sword-fighting in it). It’s a very fun movie, and I’m going to be joined after the screening by special guest Evan Dorkin, the cartoonist behind such classic works as “Milk & Cheese”, “Dork”, and the recent Dark Horse series “Beasts Of Burden” about housepets who solve supernatural mysteries. He’s also a top-shelf movie fan and scholar, someone I always enjoy talking to, and a world-class raconteur. He alone will be worth the price of admission. But you also get a movie with it!

“Kill!”
Wednesday, April 7, 8pm
92YTribeca
200 Hudson St.
Manhattan
More info about the movie and tickets for sale.

Kill! (1968)
Sly, cynical Genta hates being a samurai. Naïve farmer Hanjiro dreams of becoming one. They find themselves on opposite sides of a violent rebellion. They meet while attempting to catch an elusive chicken. This is not a normal samurai movie.

Director Kihachi Okamoto’s Kill! is among other things a sharp satirical comedy, a top-notch samurai adventure, a disillusioned take on the masculine myths of Japanese history and a re-appropriation of the spaghetti westerns that had already appropriated earlier samurai films. Starring Japan’s great leading man Tatsuya Nakadai (subject of a recent Film Forum career retrospective) as a hero who’s more Bugs Bunny than bushido.