Solid, bloody entertainment on an epic scale!

The highlight of the familiar tale of rashness, greed, and vanity is the ghostly evil of the Lady Kaede character--bravo! She is horribly manipulative and ghoulishly portrayed in her floating finery.

As usual, any film over 2 hours has to justify itself and though it felt overly long in some sections (maybe some pillaging/fighting scenes and some lost king scenes) most of the time I was all in for massive army shots, crazy blood spurts, and the devotion of the fool to his foolish master.

The use of color here is amazing--akin to the Umbrellas of Cherbourg but with a lot more blood. The color use helps tell the story in so many ways, but honestly it just delighted me--especially in the film's first thirty minutes--I felt like I was given a gift to enjoy, it was just so pretty.

The use of the clouds and nature to denote ends of scenes--played up mostly in the first act of the story--also highlighted the chaos brewing and gave the King Lear-theater mood, too.

The ending is wonderfully sad. Happy New Year!