Blade of the Immortal

"Blade of the Immortal" is a striking manga adaptation - using the source to give the large cast strikingly iconic visual differenation in a samurai once-upon-a-time-in-feudal-Japan kinda way. The story is a bit of a variation of "True Grit" - a young girl has her family killed by a gang of bandits and hires a warrior to get her revenge - only, of course, with the location reset and the fights far more epic. Our warrior also happens to be pretty much unkillable due to an ancient curse (though not, it should be noted, impervious to hefty wounding), leading to fights of more than usual bloodyness.

This hit all my buttons. There's visual spectacle, entertaining violence, iconic characters, a rollicking heroic story, very bad baddies, and a lot of the red stuff flying about. Takeshi Miike has made 100 films (and, inevitably, some are more phoned-in than others) but this is a master luxuriating in his skill for pure samurai pleasure. I can't really argue that this is going for particular depth - it's pulpy goodness at its core - but I don't care when the result is this much fun.