It reassures me that this does not happen exclusively to me. But unfortunately it happens to me very often.
It happens to all of us, and here we have at least the excuse that we're communicating in a foreign language (which is a bigger barrier than most think it is, because language imho influences very much the way we're thinking). One of today's problems, though, is simple that more and more people simply don't have the means to understand texts of some complexity which is one of the many reasons of today's problems (and those who have the means often think they don't have the time to read a whole text carefully, so often the messages get scrambled).
I actually don't like samurai and martial arts movies.
Neither did my wife, along with westerns. She also had more or less a dislike for very old movies, so it wasn't that easy to get her to watch the first Kurosawa movie (I chose Yôjinbo for that). Now, if you would ask her about her top 5 favorite directors, I don't really know the answer, but Kurosawa would be among them. And maybe "the guy who made 'Twilight Samurai'" which is a movie she really digs. The typical "samurai or martial arts flic" she still wouldn't like, along with all those run-of-the-mill westerns and most of the better ones (actually like myself). Neither did she expect to like "Sword Of Doom".
Tôshiro Mifune is one of her favorite actors

. Now. And of course she likes "Django unchained", actually probably our favorite Tarantino movie as well.
Django is a good example. It's not just a western, it's a movie that happens to be in a western setting, not something you'd expect from knowing all those old John Wayne westerns or "cowboy and indians" flics from the fifties and sixties. So the setting and some labels don't matter for a good movie. And it has it reasons that many of Kurosawa's movies were remade by European and American directors (especially 7 samurai, who spawned a Hollywood remake with several sequels, a cringeworthy bad science fiction version, two serials (I think) and a new remake a few years ago amongst others (as kid I had a comic with a star wars version of it), and Yôjimbo, whose story kickstarted the spaghetti western with Sergio Leone's "For a handful of dollars" and the minor but quite known "Last man standing" with Bruce Willis).
I don't know all of them, but of course I know that "Seven Samurai" is a classic.
Now I may sound a little bit dogmatic, sorry about that, but a lot of movie makers and probably any teacher of anything cinematic would agree that you have to know a few classics if you want to create movies of your own. All those people probably won't quite agree about which movies are absolutely "necessary viewing", but Kurosawa would be among them usually. And there is a reason that the anime series "Akira" is named after him.
While Kurosawa is best known for Seven Samurai, which is a masterpiece, that can be kind of a drag to watch. It's long and the quality of the restauration on my older criterion edition isn't that good (there is only so much you can do but it's possible that a better restauration does exist because of today's better technical possibilities). And you'd have to watch it in original length (there are to many shortened versions around, at least for a time the only one with German subtitles among them).
Yôjimbo (Yôjinbô) wasn't only remade a few times, it's very influential and often cited in other movies without you knowing it

. It's a samurai flic in that way that Django is a western. They use swords, it's violent for it's time, they wear kimonos, but it's also a mould for countless other movies, the two mentioned before but also "Miller's crossing" and in many ways the whole "Star Wars" series (which certainly doesn't belong to my favorites, but one could argue that at least the first made is essential viewing, too).
Rashômon, 1950. I knew a guy who worked as a film critique for a big newspaper and had studied film. I wouldn't go as far as he, who was of the sincere opinion that this is the best movie ever made. He saw it also as an example of his theory that a good movie should work without dialogue, at least well enough, that you more or less can follow the meaning even if you don't understand the language. Now I happen to disagree there, because there are too many tidbits of Japanese culture we westerners can't appreciate to the full degree, but the story in itself is a good one, as is the film-making. And even if it's set in times of the samurai it's not a Samurai movie at all.
By the way,
@Helmut probably could make a better list of "must-sees for any film-student", because he knows much more than me about all this, but I suspect that these three would also make his list of essential viewing.
But I also like movies like "Memories of Matsuko" - available on Youtube in full length in German. The beginning might take some getting used to, but then it gets better and better. If you like this kind of movies....
Well, I'll find out if I like it.
Well, the world is full of good movies
Good ones, yes; really, really good ones, no. And most are simply acceptable, no more nor less, or just bad. When talking about movies I often mention some older ones, because they are important (and still a joy to watch), but I don't believe that older movies in general are better than those produced today (if you'd look carefully at what was made more than, say, 50 years ago, you'd see that the percentage of (near) masterpieces is probably as high as today and many movies are rightly forgotten or only shown as cheap tv fudder). Only in old times they had it far easier to be original. Nowadays it's harder and harder to have an idea that nobody else had before (so some of my favorite movies are only a few years old).