Yojimbo (1961)
用心棒
Drama, Thriller • 1h 50m
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Cast: Toshirō Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Yōko Tsukasa, Isuzu Yamada, Daisuke Katō, Seizaburō Kawazu, Takashi Shimura, Hiroshi Tachikawa, Yōsuke Natsuki, Eijirō Tōno, Kamatari Fujiwara, Ikio Sawamura, Atsushi Watanabe, Susumu Fujita, Kyū Sazanka, Kō Nishimura, Takeshi Katō, Ichirō Nakatani, Sachio Sakai, Akira Tani, Namigoro Rashomon, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Gen Shimizu, Jerry Fujio, Yutaka Sada, Shin Ōtomo, Shōichi Hirose, Hideyo Amamoto, Shōji Ōki, Fuminori Ōhashi, Hiroshi Kiyama, Senkichi Ōmura, Noriko Honma, Ryusuke Nishio, Naoya Kusakawa, Nadao Kirino, Mitsuo Tsuda, Shinpei Takagi, Jun Ōtomo, Akio Kusama, Yasuzō Ogawa, Hiroshi Takagi, Jun'ichirō Mukai, Takuzō Kumagai, Ichirō Chiba, Haruya Sakamoto, Rinsaku Ogata, Takeo Ogushi, Yoko Terui, Hiromi Mineoka, Michiko Kawa
BFI 4K Blu-ray
Best English-friendly release · updated 9 months ago
UHD tiers
Overview
A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and sake merchant Tokuemon to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men.
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Sources: blah-ray.blogspot.com (opens in a new tab)
Criterion 4K Blu-ray: intact grain compared to Toho/BFI UHDs' DNR'd master
Criterion 4K Blu-ray is good, derived from the 1995 Criterion LaserDisc (which would be minimally better due to its lack of filtering) see blah-ray
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Best format: 1080p Blu-ray
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Best format: 1080p Blu-ray
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
BFI 4K Blu-ray has excellent master and grade, no DNR and tasteful HDR
Restored original mono mix: Toho Japan 4K Blu-ray
Unrestored original mono: 2014 BFI Blu-ray
BFI 4K Blu-ray has OG Perspecta (in 5.1 container) and a stereo downmix of it; no original mono.
The unrestored track on BFI's earlier release appears to be an almost entirely unmanipulated transfer of the original mix. It suffers from a distracting low-frequency hum. The 4K restoration comes with a restored track, which appears to be the same transfer, but which appears to be cleaned up with a moderate amount of noise reduction and some EQ, nicely opening up the high-end, and which is likely to be preferable to most listeners. All earlier releases sound poor.
Perspecta isn't a discrete surround format, instead only relying on manipulating volume and panning of the mono track across L/C/R channels, based on embedded control tones. As such, even the Perspecta track is technically just the mono mix, though the omission of the proper mono on BFI's 4K is still unfortunate.
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Criterion NTSC DVD overall. The 4K restoration's track is denoised and sounds muffled, but has a few of moments where it edges out in detail
Audio analysis between the Criterion 4K Blu-ray, BFI Blu-ray and Toho 4K Blu-ray
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Italy Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray >StudioCanal UK (slightly better encoding on Eagle?)
The US Criterion DVD has some unique supplements with 2.0 surround audio - this release contains Japan end titles.
The Japan 4K Restoration Blu-ray has some exclusive features with 4.0 audio (though the release is not English-friendly)- this release contains Japan end titles.
The StudioCanal releases contain France end titles - while their 4K Blu-ray releases contain identical features.
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Best format: 1080p Blu-ray
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
No clear winner, Criterion SDR 4K Blu-ray has better defined grain and is cleaned-up more thoroughly. But looks grayer and flatter in daytime scenes. BFI 4K Blu-ray's HDR/DV is better in contrast but the grading can be debatable.
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Best format: 1080p Blu-ray
Best format: 1080p Blu-ray
Best format: 1080p Blu-ray
Director: Dennis Hopper
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
BFI Blu-ray has better detail. Severin 4K Blu-ray has HDR but poor encode.
BFI Blu-ray renders grain structure better than Severin 4K Blu-ray’s disappointing encode, although Severin does feature an HDR grading with Dolby Vision. Furthermore, Severin’s soundtrack is worse due to the noise reduction applied.
Severin 4K Blu-ray has very good extras that are more relevant to the film
Director: John Cassavetes
Best format: 1080p Blu-ray
Director: Roberto Rossellini
Best format: 1080p Blu-ray
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Best format: 1080p Blu-ray
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
BFI 4K Blu-ray scheduled for October 2026 release
More Drama on Blu-ray
Director: Julia Ducournau
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Curzon 4K
HDR helps considerably with the deliberately murky aesthetic. VDMS encode is overall very good despite chroma noise in flashback sequences.
Directors: Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
4K encode is low-pass filtered and noticeably so, which was unfortunately par for the course with Criterion 4Ks until sometime in 2024. Still better than the Criterion and Lionsgate Blu-Ray discs for the Dolby Vision grading alone.
Best format: 1080p Blu-ray
StudioCanal Blu-ray
StudioCanal was overseen and approved by Nicolas Roeg and has a more filmic color grade than the Warner Archive Blu-Ray.
Best format: 1080p Blu-ray
2014 Japan "Hayao Miyazaki Collection" Studio Ghibli Blu-ray
Japan Studio Ghibli 4K Blu-ray announced for a November 25, 2026 release
Japanese audio: 2014 Japan "Hayao Miyazaki Collection" Studio Ghibli Blu-ray/US GKIDS Blu-ray
English dub (Disney): 1998 US Disney VHS has better sounding vocals despite altered music and sound effects, the US Disney LaserDisc has limited audio
Releases from 2010 onward have the original music and sound effects, but distorted vocals
English dub (Streamline): 1996 Japan LaserDisc, available in Ghibli Aa Ippai Collection boxset
Director: Rob Reiner
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Arrow 4K Blu-ray releasing December 14 2026
Director: David Fincher
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
4K Blu-ray has exclusive “unrated” audio with a small change to one line under the request of David Fincher (removed the poor dub over of frickin’ in the line “Screw it, let’s gut the f**kin’ nerd.”).
Director: Josh Safdie
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Sources: testsbluray.com (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Entertainment in Video UK 4K Blu-ray or French Metropolitan 4K Blu-ray
The UK 4K Blu-ray and Canada 4K Blu-ray both do not have the low-pass that the US 4K Blu-ray has. The UK 4K Blu-ray has some general blockiness and chroma artifacting issues, but the Canada 4K Blu-ray has at least a handful of scenes where the encode completely falls apart and massive macroblocks are visible. The Canada 4K Blu-ray also does not have hardcoded forced subtitles for the newsreel scene like the US and UK 4K Blu-rays. The grade is the same between all three discs.
See tenia's review of the French 4K Blu-ray but no comparison available
The Atmos mix is the same between the US 4K Blu-ray and the UK 4K Blu-ray save for the amount of dynamic objects: the UK 4K Blu-ray has 15 to the USA's 11.
The UK 4K Blu-ray also has a DD-EX compatibility track and a lossless version of the commentary track that is in Dolby Digital on the US and Canada 4K Blu-rays.
UK 4K plays fine in motion https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=24007274&postcount=181
Director: John Schlesinger
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Included Imprint Blu-Ray also has markedly better image compression than the Criterion Blu-Ray, though do note the Imprint has some adjusted color grading within roughly the first five minutes of the film
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=16775595&postcount=450
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=24237074&postcount=73
Best format: 1080p Blu-ray
Signal One UK Blu-Ray
Gorgeously filmic 2K remaster supervised and approved by Jerry Schatzberg from Fox and flawlessly encoded by FiM.
Director: Chris Columbus
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Disney 4K Blu-ray has encoding issues with bitrates dipping into 40mbps, and Kaleidescape has better encoding than Disney see caps
Old Fox Blu-ray master is stretched and sharpened
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