Equus Series

Made toward the end of his life, this film by Akira Kurosawa is at once amazingly beautiful and incredibly slow going. An anthology of imagery and lessons, Dreams focuses on the ways life both gives and takes away, almost with the same hand. Nonlinear to the point of expressionism, it's a film only for the Kurosawa enthusiast who feels the need to see all of his films. In a scene toward the end, Martin Scorsese appears as Vincent Van Gogh, painting in a field that looks like one of his paintings. Visually arresting--and sometimes just arrested.