Catalog Search Results
1) True mothers
Series
Language
日本語
Formats
Description
After a long and unsuccessful struggle to get pregnant, Satoko and her husband decide to adopt a child. Over the next six years, the middle-class couple and their young son Asato settle into a comfortable, albeit routine, life. The family's orderly existence is shattered by the arrival of Hikari, a young woman claiming to be Asato's biological mother, demanding his return. As tensions mount, Satoko grows more and more emboldened to defend her family....
2) 13 assassins
Language
日本語
Description
Thirteen brave samurai must face overwhelming odds in an epic battle against a sadistic lord and his army of 200 to prevent him from plunging Japan into war.
3) First love
Language
日本語
Description
A noir-tinged yakuza film blending genres in the story of a young boxer and a call girl, who fall passionately in love while getting innocently caught up in a drug-smuggling scheme over the course of one night in Tokyo. FIRST LOVE is directed by Takashi Miike, at his most fun and anarchic.
Language
日本語
Formats
Description
Sixty-one years ago, the United States and Japanese armies met on Iwo Jima. Decades later, hundreds of letters are unearthed from that stark island's soil. The letters give faces and voices to the men who fought there, as well as the extraordinary general who led them. Leading the defense is Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. With little defense other than sheer will and the volcanic rock of the island itself, Gen. Kuribayashi's unprecedented tactics...
Series
Language
日本語
Appears on these lists
Asian American & Pacific Islander Month
Asian American and Pacific Islander Month
MPL Criterion Collection
Asian American and Pacific Islander Month
MPL Criterion Collection
Description
This epic masterpiece is about a group of 16th century samurai who are hired to defend a small Japanese village that finds itself annually raided by an army of bandits who steal the meager crops harvested by the peasants. Tired of relinquishing their food supply but woefully inept in combat skills, the villagers decide to hire a band of samurai to protect them. In addition to the primary conflict between the villagers and the bandits, much of the...
6) Madadayo
Language
日本語
Description
Set in postwar Japan, the film follows the last two decades in the life of Hyakken Uchida, a free spirited writer and teacher, highlighted by his relationship with his students who venerate him in his old age.
Language
日本語
Formats
Description
Master filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse, Cure, Tokyo Sonata) won the Silver Lion (Best Director) at the **Venice Film Festival** for this riveting, gorgeously crafted, old-school Hitchockian thriller shot in stunning 8K. The year is 1940 in Kobe, on the eve of the outbreak of World War II. Local merchant and amateur filmmaker Yusaku (Issey Takahashi, Kill Bill) senses that things are headed in an unsettling direction. Following a trip to Manchuria,...
Series
Language
日本語
Appears on list
Description
In this triptych, mundane encounters spin into a world of infinite possibilities. In Episode 1: Magic (or Something Less Assuring), a young woman is startled when she realizes that her best friend's new flame might just be her ex; in Episode 2: Door Wide Open, a disgruntled student plots to trick his college professor, using his friend-with-benefits as bait; and in Episode 3: Once Again, a girl's college reunion leads to an unanticipated run-in with...
11) The wonderland
Language
日本語
Formats
Description
On the day before her birthday, young Akane meets the mysterious alchemist Hippocrates who brings her through a basement and into a fantastical world full of magic and color. Though things seem peaceful on the surface, he reveals this world is in danger and as the destined Goddess of the Green Wind, it is Akane's responsibility to bring back the rain and save this world from the terror known as Zan Gu. The only problem? Akane just wants to go home....
Series
Language
日本語
Description
For kids around the world, music is often the only salvation when the pain and anxiety of teenage life becomes too much to bear. Yuichi is in the 8th grade and he worships Lily Chou-Chou, a Bjork-like chanteuse whose epic music is lush and transcendent. Yuichi only lives for Lily Chou-Chou's big Tokyo concert, where the lies and violence can be washed away by the presence of his goddess and her powerful music. But fate has yet another obstacle in...
14) Sexual drive
Language
日本語
Description
Equal parts thriller, sex comedy, and gastronomy - SEXUAL DRIVE is an unconventional triptych following the seemingly unconnected lives of three people around Japan and their appetites, both culinary and carnal. In the first story, designer Enatsu worries about his sexless marriage. Next, office worker Akane is recovering from driving-induced panic attacks. In the final third, elite advertising agent Ikeyama wants to end a relationship with his lover....
Language
日本語
Description
When four young orphans—Hikari, Ikuko, Ishi, and Takemura—first meet, their parents’ bodies are being turned into dust, like fine Parmesan atop a plate of spaghetti Bolognese, and yet none of them can shed a tear. They are like zombies; devoid of all emotion. With no family, no future, no dreams, and no way to move forward, the young teens decide that the first level of this new existence involves salvaging a gaming console, an old electric...
16) Giants and toys
Language
日本語
Appears on list
Description
Giants and Toys is a sharp and snappy corporate satire revolving around the ruthless machinations of a group of admen working in the confectionary industry. As a new recruit to the marketing department of World Caramel, fresh-faced graduate Nishi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) is eager to impress his ambitious and hard-nosed boss Goda (Black Test Car's Hideo Takamatsu), even if it strains his relationships with his college friend Yokoyama (Koichi Fujiyama) and...
17) The real thing
Language
日本語
Description
After a floundering toy salesman rescues a beguiling woman whose car was stuck on the train tracks, she inadvertently whisks him into an epic series of misadventures that turn his life upside down. While his once humdrum routine was already complicated by two female co-workers, he soon finds himself entrenched with gangsters, strange interlopers, kidnapping, and other sundry crimes and misdemeanors. Singular auteur Koji Fukada (A Girl Missing) marks...
Language
日本語
Description
Pompo is a talented and gutsy producer in ₃Nyallywood, ₄ the movie-making capital of the world. Although she's known for B-movies, one-day Pompo tells her movie-loving but apprehensive assistant Gene that he will direct her next script: a delicate drama about aging and tormented creative genius, starring the legendary and Brando-esque actor Martin Braddock, and a young actress seeking her first break. But when the production heads towards chaos,...
20) Ikiru
Series
Language
日本語
Formats
Description
Discovering that he is in the terminal stages of cancer, a clerk spends his last months in search of the meaning to life. After his pursuit of pleasure has failed, he finds self-realization in bringing about the building of a children's playground in the slums and dies quietly fulfilled.
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