Original drama special written by Taichi Yamada about the sadness and resilience of human beings through a man and his wife's best friend who become attracted to each other after the death of the wife.
When a tough yakuza gangster is betrayed by his bosses, it means all out war. Bodies pile up as he takes out everyone in his way to the top in a brutal quest for revenge.
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.
A 1920s playwright meets a beautiful woman who may be the ghost of his patron's deceased wife.
A lavish retelling of the true story of the final voyage and ultimate destruction and sinking of the battleship Yamato, Japan's greatest flagship during the Second World War.
Following the death of the second Tokugawa shogun, it is revealed that he was poisoned by retainers of his son Iemitsu in hopes of gaining him the shogunate despite the stammer and birthmark which undermine his respect. Iemitsu and his brother Tadanaga become bitter rivals for the shogunate, and the land is split into factions, eventually erupting into warfare. Iemitsu's mentor, his fencing instructor Yagyu, is fixated upon securing Iemitsu the shogunate and ends up betraying everyone, even his own family, in pursuit of the goal.
Genji, the son of the emperor, is the talk of the Kyoto nobility for his charm and good looks, yet he cannot stop himself from pursuing an unobtainable object of desire: his father's young and beautiful bride. Following the tragic consequences of his obsession, Genji wanders from one affair to another, always seeking some sort of completion to his life.
A married couple of abalone divers must confront ruthless investors taking over their coastline.
The story of the silk industry and the young girls who worked as silk spinners in the early 1900s in Japan. The silk mills were located in Okaya which lies just beyond the Nomugi Pass. The women and girls worked in a hot, humid atmosphere without rest, and endured those conditions and sexual harassment to earn money for their poor families. Across the ocean, it was the great depression in America.
Set during World War II, the film follows a young brother and sister as they attempt to survive the aftermath of the firebombing of Kobe City.
A drunk husband has a gambling compulsion that ends up putting him in a bad way with the local Yakuza. Unable to pay his debt, he hocks the deed to his wife’s restaurant in order to stay out of trouble with the thugs. But it’s not enough. The wife has to sacrifice her body as well.
A young man living on growing tomatoes in a greenhouse in a residential area. Tomato cultivation is as doomed as his personal life where he tries to keep alive his romance with the eccentric Kaede and parents selected fiancee Ayako.
Two Japanese scientists, Ushioda and Ochi, develop a bond with their sled dogs while on an expedition in Antarctica.
Though his parents help him run the family business, Jun still feels persecuted by their love; when they bar him from meeting with his girlfriend, tensions increase.
When cabaret singer Lily writes Toraya about her illness, Tora-san rushes to Okinawa to be by her side.
Kon Ichikawa's retelling of the classic true story of Samurai honor. When a young clan lord is forced to commit seppuku (ritual suicide), his loyal followers (now Ronin, masterless Samurai) dedicate their lives to avenging his death.
A man and a little girl meet in a bicycle parking in Tokyo. The little girl says she wants to watch the sea, and their travel begins. The man does not intend to be a kidnapper – he asks the girl to phone her mother and tell her she's with him. During their trip they meet various people, but they always must continue on, lest the man be arrested.
Set in the post-World War II climate of the 1960s in Kobe, the movie explores the struggle for power within the powerful Manpyo family.
Bungo is released from prison to find his son Kenichi in the care of strangers. Teruko, the woman originally looking after the boy, was forced to leave town and sell herself into prostitution. Bungo and Kenichi, in their search for Teruko, arrive in a new place and find work running a peddling stall for the upright Tatsumaki family. However, the drifting father and son soon find themselves caught up in a struggle for territory. Boss Negishi, the head of the yakuza family responsible for the death of the former Tatsumaki leader, will stop at nothing to take over the marketplace. Sickened by the injustice, Bungo takes on the rival boss knowing it might cost him his newly acquired freedom..
The blind masseuse is targeted by the leader of a powerful yakuza group while also fending off a jealous husband bent on revenge. Zatoichi tours Edo's underground via a rousing onsen fight scene, gambling houses and the gender-bending character of Umeji, before a final, flame-filled conflagration.
Akira leaves for the Mt. Gassan foothills before winter's onset, visiting the local temple and interacting with the residents all while falling for fair Fumiko.
The story of a teacher who comes to a village on the Inland Sea and the relationship that develops between her and her 12 pupils.
A biographical dramatization about the production of the original Ultraman, the beloved classic special effects fantasy series from Eiji Tsuburaya.
Through the relationship between a woman who has lost her husband and her brother-in-law who proposes to her, the complexity of the female psyche and the differences between their hearts are portrayed in detail.
Same director · TMDB similar
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
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Two separate stories mesh - in the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, begins dying of a heart condition and her son Nathan tries to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies. In the second, lawyer Robert Layton and his wife Kate are slowly drifting apart and the matter comes to a head during Christmas when Kate takes over for Maggie for the school choir.
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While settling his father’s estate, Finn Conrad becomes suspicious as to why the man left a nurse $100,000. His dad knew her for less than two months before he died. Just before Christmas, Finn wants what to reclaim what he considers his family’s money, going undercover to investigate the bed and breakfast the nurse has recently taken over. When Finn meets Willa, he discovers she’s not a conniving gold digger at all, but a woman in need who put the money to good use. When she discovers his true identity, will it keep Willa from ever trusting him again?
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An unlikely friendship evolves over one wild night in LA between a struggling journalist and actor Hervé Villechaize, the world's most famous gun-toting dwarf, resulting in life-changing consequences for both.
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The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.
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A dramatization of the life of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault (Don Cheadle), with a lot of factual based occurrences. A reformed junkie returns from prison to clean up his act and devote the rest of his life to the young kids of Harlem. 1996 was the 25th anniversary of the first tournament named after him.
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Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
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An acclaimed stage performer, Dorothy still struggled with the challenge of her color, in a time that wouldn't let some stars in by the front door. Yet against the odds she beat out many more famous rivals for the role of "Carmen Jones", becoming the first black woman ever nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Marriages and affairs would break her heart, but her heart was strong. Seductive and easily seduced, she was born to be a star - with all the glory and all the pain of being loved, abused, cheated, glorified, undermined and undefeated. Here was a woman who wouldn't wait in the wings. Halle Berry stars as Dorothy Dandrige.
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In the fall of 1994, a teacher at Chicago's run-down Steinmetz High conspires with the school's academic decathlon team to cheat on an academic competition.
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A love story written by an ordinary housewife is going to be broadcast as a radio drama and almost everyone among the crew insists on changing various parts of the play to their liking.
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.
A squadron of Japanese Self-Defense Force soldiers find themselves transported through time to their country's warring states era, when rival samurai clans were battling to become the supreme Shogun.
The Americans are swiftly closing on Okinawa, an island just south of the Japanese mainland. The Imperial command sends top generals and several army divisions to defend it at all costs. The mission quickly degenerates as vital resources and troops are diverted to other islands. After a civilian evacuation ends in tragedy most of non-combatants are forced to remain on the island. Many convert to soldier status. Tokyo sends mixed messages that squander time and resources, as when they order the defenders to build an airstrip for aircraft that never come. The truth soon becomes obvious: the high command decides that the island cannot be held and effectively abandons the Okinawan defenders. When the Americans land many troops are deployed in the wrong places. As the slaughter mounts, a suicidal attitude takes hold. Okinawa becomes a death trap, for civilian volunteers and non-combatants as well.
Goro, a small-time thug who manages an adult video store, is approached with a proposal for a sham marriage. Seeing no option to refuse, he agrees to lend his family registry in exchange for money and the promise that he’d be “helping someone out.” His partner in the marriage is a Chinese woman named Bai Lan, who plans to use the money she earns after obtaining Japanese citizenship to support her family back home. Goro and Bai Lan meet only once, during her immigration screening, after which they each go their separate ways. A while later, Goro receives some unexpected news.
This extraordinarily complex film is not only a send-up of every samurai film ever made, it is also an extrapolation of the value of life. The Yamatai, represented by Prince Susano-O and elderly advisor Sumuke, hire Yumihiko of Matsuro to hunt the phoenix so that Queen Himiko, sister of Susano-O can have eteranal life.
Tetsuo is a young man living in Tokyo, who falls in love with a deaf-mute factory girl. He has always felt jealous of his college-educated brother, but ultimately wins both the girl and his father's acceptance and support in a touching and refreshing way.
A scruffy detective investigates the murders of three sisters on a small Japanese island in 1946.
Set in a barren, futuristic Tokyo of highways and wastelands, a rowdy group of punk bands and their fans gather to protest slow, boring, Japanese living.
Bungo becomes a single parent when his wife leaves him because of his drinking and gambling. Deciding to quit his vices, he works menial jobs, drifting from city to city. However, not completely losing his gambling tastes, he became a hunted man and must escape to Tokyo after he was found cheating at dice. Bungo and his son Kenichi comes upon the Kizaki Family in Asakusa, where more troubles are awaiting them...
Tora-san spends several days at the home of a hard-working salaryman ("salaried worker"), who abruptly disappears. When the man's wife asks Tora-san to help find him, he falls in love with her, and secretly hopes the husband will not be found.
A timid insurance agent investigates a possible insurance fraud case that involves a death. As the facts are slowly revealed, he becomes progressively more frightened.
Kansuke Yamamoto is a samurai who dreams of a country united, peaceful from sea to sea. He enters the service of Takeda, the lord of Kai domain. He convinces Takeda to kill the lord of neighboring Suwa and take his wife as a concubine. He then convinces the widow, Princess Yu, to accept this arrangement and to bear Takeda a son. He pledges them his life. He then spends years using treachery, poetic sensibility, military and political strategy to expand Takeda's realm, advance the claim of Yu's son as the heir, and prepare for an ultimate battle with the forces of Echigo. Has Kansuke overreached? Are his dreams, blinded by love, too big?
In Shibamata, Tokyo, Tora-san's family prepares for a wedding. Meanwhile, the traveling Tora-san meets an old acqaintance in Iwate Province. Tora-san refuses to drink with him, afraid that the acquaintance, now settled and married, will again become attracted to Tora-san's wandering existence. Tora-san becomes attracted to a female barber, but must break off their relationship so that she too can live a secure life. She instead gets into an abusive relationship with a motorcyclist.
A gripping tale of friendship set against the backdrop of Hokkaido. Shinichi sets out to earn a few honest dollars with which to bail a friend out of jail.
After a chance encounter with Hiroshi's father on a bus, Tora decides to get serious and reflect on the mortality of man. His plans are derailed when a beautiful lady starts working at Toraya.
Banana, Gloves and Whale Shark
A humble taxi driver (Sato Bsaku) is surprised when Lucia (Takagi Mio), a bar girl he was attracted to 10 years ago, happens to get in his taxi as a passenger. The man was once a bomb terrorist, and when she discovered his identity, he imprisoned her in his room. She was eventually caught up in a bombing incident and her whereabouts are unknown...
The ghost of a samurai's wife takes revenge on her husband.
The 9th "Ekimae" feature.
Journalist Kuroki is investigating clandestine arms sales to Southeast Asia. He discovers that the point man in an arms trade was also involved in the cover-up of a murder on an American base during the Allied Occupation. The film rolls along as a suspenseful thriller while offering a critique of political corruption, hypocrisy, and journalistic cowardice in postwar Japan.
The 10th "Ekimae" feature.
The eleventh film in the comedy series starring Japan's leading comedy group, the Crazy Cats. Susumu Sakamori and his friends travel to Mexico to find a stone statue that contains the location of the secret treasure "Olmeca".
