4. Ikiru (1952)
This one is a bit of a cheat, because along with Akira Kurosawa entire directorial filmography,
Ikiru is technically available on Blu-ray, albeit only overseas in Japan. A middle-aged, widowed man who has pushed papers at the same desk for decades is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and it awakens him with the shocking realization that his life has virtually no meaning - when he dies, no one will have any reason to remember him. Even his kids scarcely heed him any attention. After much pondering, walking and drinking, he decides to make his last year alive count, and to turn a filthy cesspool into a flourishing park, and vows to fight to make it happen until his last, dying breath. Much like
Spirited Away, we would have completely gotten away with selecting essentially any one of Kurosawas works, because the man was a nothing short of a master of his craft. Compared to most other of the directors films, Ikiru is arguably bittersweet, and a huge bummer of a story, because it is not exactly an uplifting tale, but it just might be his most powerful one. Roger Ebert has been quoted naming Ikiru his favorite Kurosawa film, and it just might be ours as well.