The technique... allows the images to rattle through the viewer's mind like a transcendent line of poetry; these images are so intense and stay on the screen for such a time that the viewer's interpretation of them becomes introspective and personal.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 18, 2023

Kurosawa is content to offer a series of fractured musings.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 31, 2023

Even the exalted defenders of "Dreams" have a hard time justifying this pair of abominable spawn. [Full review in Spanish]

| Dec 1, 2022

The movie, an eight-part trance, is beautiful but disconnected.

| Original Score: B | Aug 31, 2022

By appreciating Kurosawa as an investigator of human behavior, Dreams becomes something far more than the self-indulgent vanity project of an elder auteur; it becomes an essential film for humanity.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 5, 2022

For all its expensive production values, simplicity of emotion seems to be the keynote -- as it was in Shakespeare's last plays.

| Jan 16, 2020

Dreams might be minor Kurosawa, but it's still a fascinating achievement.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 29, 2018

Dreams should be seen for the exercise that it gives the imagination, not for its thumping didactic content.

| Sep 5, 2018

Rarely in cinema has the raw personal and symbolic power of dreaming been so effectively captured as in Akira Kurosawa's 1990 feature ... Kurosawa's late film beautifully evokes the short and often baffling nature of dreaming.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 16, 2017

while not necessarily among Kurosawa's best, is still a remarkable achievement that draws you deep into its fantastical world; even the least effective bits still work in their own way

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 7, 2016

There's greatness in the film's first hour.

| Mar 4, 2013

his is clearly the work of a master filmmaker, even if his Dreams are as unpredictable and uneven as our own.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 4, 2013

I wish I could say that every segment is fantastic, but just like so many other "short story films", it's a mixed bag.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 19, 2012

Beautiful to look at but a rather empty fantasy film.

| Original Score: C | Feb 2, 2008

In the uneven career of Akira Kurosawa, two limiting factors were sentimentality and preachiness, and both come to the fore in this 1990 collection of eight dreams.

| Feb 9, 2007

Only during a final procession does the old Kurosawa magic get a brief look-in, but by then the hackneyed moralising and dramatic languor have ensured that, despite the well-meaning message, it's hard to care.

| Jun 24, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 23, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 25, 2004

Worth seeing if you are a fan of the director, but for anyone else I'd suggest first seeking out his more famous films of the 1950s and '60s.

Full Review | Original Score: 68/100 | Jan 20, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 22, 2003