Dreams

Dreams (1990) is Akira Kurosawa's late-career anthology, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Eight short stories, with nothing tying them together except that the director dreamed every one of them.

A boy disobeys his mother and spies on a procession of foxes getting married in the rain. A young painter steps inside Van Gogh's canvases and meets the artist himself, played by Martin Scorsese in a brief, surprising cameo. Mountaineers lost in a blizzard are tempted by a snow spirit; a returning officer is confronted by the ghosts of the men who died under his command; a crimson sky bleeds over a Japan torn apart by nuclear meltdown. There's no conventional plot here, only fear, childhood memory and Kurosawa's grief over what people keep doing to the natural world.

Visually it's astonishing, each segment composed like a moving painting, with effects work handled by George Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic. The closing tale of a village built around water mills plays like a quiet last testament. Slow, contemplative and not for every mood, it rewards anyone willing to treat a film like a gallery. Stream Dreams online on iFILM.