But there’s still enough “Beat” in Kitano for him to retain his impish streak. In “The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi,” more so than any other Kitano film save for the little-known “Getting Any?,” a gag is ...

What separates “Zatoichi” from other swordfight movies is that the eponymous hero, played, of course, by Kitano himself, is blind. Like the many other directors of films featuring this well-known ...

“The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi,” the latest entertainment from Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano, isn’t your average blind masseur-gambler-swordsman movie. Based on a series of popular genre standards ...

For years, the Japanese cinema cranked out samurai adventures about a blind swordsman named Zatoichi. As a job description, “blind swordsman” does not sound reassuring, but it’s a gimmick that has ...

It's not that "The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi" lacks gory scenes. When a sightless masseur chops off a gambler's hand, the amputated limb spouts a geyser of blood on par with anything in "Kill Bill." ...

Japan's Takeshi "Beat" Kitano, now 57, has parlayed his rampant popularity in Japan into an eclectic film career that has resuscitated the once-moribund Japanese yakuza genre with a series of films – ...

The last time Takeshi Kitano was on the film festival circuit, it was with 2017’s Outrage Coda. Word had it this yakuza drama, the third in a trilogy, was to be his final film. The Japanese ...

A do-gooder blind masseur with a penchant for gambling and steel blades might appear an unlikely cinematic hero. But after he first appeared in the 1962 Japanese film "Zatoichi Monogatari" ("The Tale ...

Takeshi Kitano may be the most recognizable person in Japan, but almost nobody in the United States has ever laid eyes on him. A pop Renaissance man, Kitano is a ubiquitous television presence, has ...

Cannes fest favorite Takeshi Kitano is behind the camera again, directing and starring in “Zatoichi,” which resurrects the long-running Japanese anti-hero, absent from the screen since the late 1980s.

Depending on who you ask, the name Takeshi "Beat" Kitano will evoke different responses. There are those who grew up on Japanese television and know him for his slapstick humor, painted-on mustaches, ...