Kidnapping Blues

Diplomats, soldiers and other representatives of a dozen nations fend off the siege of the International Compound in Peking during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. The disparate interests unite for survival despite competing factions, overwhelming odds, delayed relief and tacit support of the Boxers by the Empress of China and her generals.

Two short stories set in Edo during the Shogun era. The first, during a time when Christians are persecuted vehemently, Iori falls in love with a young Christian girl. When she and her family are captured during a raid, his sadistic master takes her as his personal slave to torment Iori. The second follows Sutezo who, forced to serve the barbarous master of a brothel in order to repay his debts, befriends a young girl. Together, they both escape and struggle to get by on scams and petty theft.

A married woman and her lover murder her husband and dump his body into a well, but his ghost returns to haunt them as the local gossip intensifies.

A Japanese bullet train is threatened with a bomb that will explode automatically if the train slows below 80 km/h, unless a ransom is paid. Police race to find the bombers so the train crew can learn how to defuse the bomb.

This sensuously beautiful film chronicles the activities of four sisters who gather in Kyoto every year to view the cherry blossoms. It paints a vivid portrait of the pre-war lifestyle of the wealthy Makioka family from Osaka, and draws a parallel between their activities and the seasonal variations in Japan.

After saving a girl from rape, a bored rail worker finds out about a chemical that makes people sleep and gets carried away into a new, violent world of ideas.

In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza.

Lady Snowblood is caught by the police and sentenced to death for her crimes. As she is sent to the gallows she is rescued by the secret police who offer her a deal to assassinate some revolutionaries.

In 2199, five years after the Gamilons began an invasion of Earth, the planet has been ravaged by the aliens' bombs. The remnants of humanity have fled underground to escape the irradiated surface. One day, former pilot Susumu Kodai discovers a capsule sent from the planet Iscandar that tells of a device that can remove the radiation from the Earth's surface. The Earth Defense Force rebuilds the battleship Yamato with a new type of propulsion system to make the 148,000 light year trip to Iscandar in hopes of saving the Earth. Within one year, the radiation will drive the rest of humanity to extinction.

Repeatedly beat to a pulp by gamblers, cops, and gangsters, lone wolf Shoji Yamanaka finally finds a home as a Muraoka family hitman and falls in love with boss Muraoka's niece. Meanwhile, the ambitions of mad dog Katsutoshi Otomo draws our series' hero, Shozo Hirono, and the other yakuza into a new round of bloodshed.

When Wabisuke's father-in-law unexpectedly dies, the family goes through a series of random events and occurrences as the funeral unfolds over three days in their home.

After being discredited as a coward, a 19th century seaman lives for only one purpose: to redeem himself. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2000.

Intrepid tax investigator Ryoko Itakura sets her sights on the mysterious and philandering Hideki Gondo, a suspected millionaire and proprietor of a thriving chain of seedy hourly hotels, who has for years succeeded at hiding the true extent of his assets from the Japanese authorities. Itakura and Gondo soon find themselves engaged in a complicated, satirical battle of wits.

Based on the "2.26 Incident", an attempted coup d'état in Japan 1936, launched by radical ultra-nationalist parts of the military. Several leading politicians were killed and the center of Tokyo was briefly held by the insurgents before the coup was suppressed.

Shozo Hirono has managed to separate from the Yamamori family and create his own small family, and extend his circle of acquaintances. These new friendships include a powerful underboss of the Muraoka family, Noboru Uchimoto.

As Japan gears up for the 1964 Olympic Games, the cops start to crack down on the gangs, under pressure from the public and the press, adding a new dimension in the war for power among the yakuza families of Hiroshima.

Two boys, whose parents ply their trade by the mouth of a muddy river in Osaka, become close friends.

Takeshi Kitano plays a version of himself in which he's a struggling director cycling through a number of different genres in an effort to complete his latest project.

The Kitao family is coping with the loss of the eldest daughter, Chizuko, who was killed in a freak accident the year prior. When the other daughter Mika is suddenly in a dangerous situation, Chizuko returns as a ghost to save her; reunited with her sister, Mika begins spending time with Chizuko again.

A war widow determined to clear the name of her disgraced husband, who was court-martialed for desertion and executed. Official records have been destroyed, and the ministry that distributes benefits continues to deny her a pension. Twenty-six years after the war, she seeks out four survivors of her husband's garrison. Each tells a dramatically different story about her husband's conduct, but she is determined to learn the truth.

One spring, Tasaka, an elementary school teacher, receives a new class of first graders. While taking the children's attendance, Tasaka is surprised to see a call girl he once had an encounter with standing among the parents in the back of the classroom. According to the school's files, her name is Yukako Sawada, and her child Eisaku has no legal father. The next day, Eisaku gives Tasaka a letter from Yukako asking to meet at the hotel where they first met, and Tasaka sets out with an uneasy feeling...

Immigrant gangs terrorize a Japanese town with their threats, loud jazz, and tasteless fashion sense, and only the tough but suave Dr. Amamiya (Ando) can stop them, as long as he gets rid of his silly peace-loving ideals.

In this humorous paean to the joys of food, a pair of truck drivers happen onto a decrepit roadside shop selling ramen noodles. The widowed owner, Tampopo, begs them to help her turn her establishment into a paragon of the "art of noodle-soup making". Interspersed are satirical vignettes about the importance of food to different aspects of human life.

A Ronin with a death wish reluctantly joins the Clan of the Forgotten Eight, a nasty crew of ronin who are wrapped up in a clan war over local prostitution.

The Bohachi Clan, the most vile, corrupt organization with ties deep in the Shogunate, have controlled the flesh trade in Japan for generations. When threatened by a competitor, they employ Saburai, a nihilistic ronin on the verge of self destruction. Blood gushes and limbs fly for anyone who stands against Saburai as he instills the Way of the Bohachi.

After six years away, D.A. Kuryu Kohei (Kimura Takuya) returns to his former Josai branch of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, just in time for a brewing storm. Kohei's first case starts out simple enough. The suspect, a blonde-haired security guard, had already confessed to manslaughter, but he suddenly retracts his confession and takes things to court with big-shot defense attorney Gamo (Matsumoto Koshiro). It turns out that the security guard is a key alibi witness in a high-profile political corruption case, and the results of his case will directly affect the next. With the media, politicians, and a special investigative team breathing down his back, Kohei must handle the case with care (and flair) to find out the truth.

The Tokugawa new Shogun is not interested in women. A nobleman with the help of a lady thief replaces the Shogun with a double, while he learns about love. But the double finds pleasure not only in women, but in his new status.

A four-part anthology in the spirit of The Twilight Zone, this film starts off with a group of commuters stranded at a train station in the rain, listening to stories told by one of the group. These include tales of a group stranded in the mountains and haunted by guilt over a death they inadvertantly caused, an emotionally broken chessmaster pressed into playing a real-life game for an eccentric millionaire, a wandering medieval samurai who finds a modern-day cell phone on the ground and a person on the other end asking questions about the past, and a young couple who agree to try a computer simulation of what their future as husband and wife would be like.

Asuka Kotobuki, a junior college student, is in the middle of her job hunting. She spends all her time visiting companies and taking job exams, but her honesty and truthful personality causes her to keep receiving rejection notices.

Just before dawn, Boro the Caterpillar hatched from an egg among patches of scrub grass. Looking around for the first time, he noticed the brilliance of the morning sun and a deliciousness in the air. Boro lowered himself down to the ground from the groundsel, and stepped out into the world of caterpillars and caterpillars' enemies.

An omnibus special featuring five stories: a piano student who plays a mysterious sonata, a mother searching for her missing son in a forest, a police officer battling cyborg monsters, a woman who grows a strange human head from a mysterious seed, and a high school girl forced to train for a samurai duel using vegetables as weapons.

An alien with super powers fallen from the sky is befriended by some people who help him stop an evil group out to get him.

An omnibus special comprised of five segments.