OK, I give up. Rashomon IS indeed one of the greatest films ever made.

[HamdenRice]

I'm a fan of Asian films, especially Japanese films, but I had somehow managed never to see Kurasawa's Rashomon.

In my area, cable's IFC puts Japanese films on every Saturday morning and this morning it was Rashomon.

At first, it was somewhat slow and I was thinking it was over-rated. But when it hit its stride, I was completely blown away.

It's in the top 5, no doubt. I already thought that Kurasawa's underrated Ikiru was the number one greatest film, and I still think it's a greater film that Rashomon, but that just means that in my book, Kurasawa may have made three of the five greatest films in the history of cinema (the third being Seven Samurai).