Hi Rick,
I loved your link - hilarious connection (while being very smart).
I'm answering more to say this as I've seen only one movie from the trilogy, and that was many years ago. I wasn't a big fan of Kobayashi, and don't remember liking it at all, but it was many years ago and I was very young so either my memory, or young me, might be wrong.

I'm a little late -- I wonder, did you see the film if it screened already?  Any impression?

Since other people might stumble across this, I'll say that I guess it would depend on what you hope for in a movie.  Obviously anybody with a particular interest in Japanese cinema and (its) history would want to see this.  If that's not exactly you, then you still might want to venture beyond the Ozu/Mizoguchi/Kurosawa/Naruse canon, since of course there are plenty of surprises out there (and this very useful canon was formed largely by and for Americans and Europeans).  Judging by the sound of your post, I'd say you might find this worthwhile even if not the greatest film ever made.  I also recommend Kobayashi's other films Harakiri and Samurai Rebellion.

Discussions of Japanese film often turn on the question of cross-cultural accessibility.  Maybe this is because some Japanese cinema seems eminently accessible and sometimes shows its Hollywood influences -- e.g. Kurosawa's movies -- while other films have been understood in the past as "too Japanese for export" -- e.g. Ozu.  I think people tend to discount this problem now, since international cinephilia has produced plenty of western audiences who appreciate Ozu.  But I wonder if variety of reactions to Kobayashi could still have something to do with the specificity of Japanese political history.  In regard to the story only, going from Kurosawa's samurai movies to Kobayashi might be a little bit like moving from neo-westerns of the 1960s to Unforgiven and Gran Torino.

I'll add that I think Nakadai Tatsuya, the star of The Human Condition, is always pretty terrific.