Mifune: The Last Samurai

Clearly Akira Kurosawa's right hand man who famously turned down Hollywood opportunities (characters he could have played include Obi-Wan Kanobi, Darth Vader, and Mr. Miyagi) deserves a documentary. Here, filmmaker Steven Okazaki, who has been nominated for four Oscars and won once (all in the short-subject documentary category), chronicles not only Mifune's unexpected path to movie stardom and his collaborations with Kurosawa, but the evolution of samurai film as a genre.