I think the time has come for a bit of a rebound on The Last Samurai. Despite its role as a cultural punchline for years, the movies is actually pretty great. The film follows Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), a Westerner hired to train the Imperial Japanese army before eventually defecting to help a group of rebellious samurai led by Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe). Fittingly, the movie now feels like the last of a certain generation of battle-filled historical epics -- a genre that has felt nearly extinct for the last two decades in Hollywood since this movie came out, although multiple important personnel went on to work on Shōgun. Director Edward Zwick's vision of a Japan on the verge of modernity is gorgeous and tragic, and while it's not his best movie (that would be Glory) or Cruise's best (take your pick), it is a fascinating cultural artifact, and a kind of interesting, mature, and well-made movie that we still see too rarely now. -- Austen Goslin