Samurai Movies

[Shad]

Fuurin Kazan (Samurai banners)
Not a movie. Historical Drama about Yamamoto Kansuke a military strategist serving Takeda.

http://www.dramacrazy.net/japanese-drama/fuurin-kazan/

[LuluSteve98]

Thanks for sharing wonderful collection of movies.

[Anjin-San]

I wanna thank you guys as well. So far, my absolute favorites are Love and Honor and Twilight Samurai. And I love the main actor in the Akira Kurosawa movies, he's f-ing epic. *googling his name* Toshirô Mifune, he's always such a funny badass.

[redxavier]

Fuurin Kazan (Samurai banners)
Not a movie. Historical Drama about Yamamoto Kansuke a military strategist serving Takeda.

http://www.dramacrazy.net/japanese-drama/fuurin-kazan/

There's a fantastic movie called Samurai Banners (1969), starring Toshiro Mifune as Kansuke. It's the perfect companion piece to Heaven and Earth as it features Takeda Shingen as the protagonist and covers a few of the Kawanakajima battles from the Takeda perspective (H&E shows it primarily from the Uesugi view).

Samurai Banners, Heaven and Earth and Kagemusha form the perfect background viewing when playing Shogun 2. They're all historical, and all involve the actual Sengoku Jidai period (unlike the vast majority of Samurai movies which take place during the Tokugawa Shogunate). SB and H&E even include a few spectacular battles.

Other good Samurai movies are:

13 Assassins (1963) - I prefer this original to the recent remake
11 Samurai (1966) - similar sort of story to the 13 Assassins
Sword of Doom (1966) - another great one from Tatsuya Nakadai with him as a swordsman killing just about everyone he comes across

And for fun, G.I. Samurai!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTb0XGhuXmU