The Lonely Swordsman (Part 1)

Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is the story of Matsumoto and Sawako, a young couple whose relationship is about to be broken apart by the former's parents, who have insisted their son take part in an arranged marriage to his boss' daughter.

A member of an elite paramilitary counter-terrorism unit becomes traumatized after witnessing the suicide bombing of a young girl and is forced to undergo retraining. However, unbeknownst to him, he becomes a key player in a dispute between rival police divisions, as he finds himself increasingly involved with the sister of the girl he saw die.

Forced on the road by yakuza obligations, a man sets out on a reckless journey to Tsumagoi. Movie posters for local cinemas were often displayed at sento (public baths) too. The handwritten text on the bottom here announces the film will play at Hassen for 3 days.

In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who guides them to a fortress hidden in the mountains.

The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson, the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.

The lives of an American expat and a half Japanese construction worker living in rural Japan are forever changed over the course of three days as they engage in an unexpected romance.

A Swiss nun falls in love with a Japanese engineer.

In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.

Yuki's family is nearly wiped out before she is born due to the machinations of a band of criminals. These criminals kidnap and brutalize her mother but leave her alive. Later her mother ends up in prison with only revenge to keep her alive. She creates an instrument for this revenge by purposefully getting pregnant. Yuki never knows the love of a family but only killing and revenge.

After going through a series of tragic events in his life, martial arts master Huo Yuanjia returns to Tianjin and must fight four international soldiers, in order to safeguard his nation's pride.

Japan, 1701. A group of samurai become rônin after their lord is forced to commit seppuku for assaulting a court official, who will become the target of a merciless revenge.

The erotic novelist Taeko is writing a morbid story of a family destroyed by incest, murder and abuse. Her assistant, Yuji, sets on a mission to uncover the reality of this story, but the reality might be too much to bear.

In 1415, in the midst of the Hundred Years' War, the young King Henry V of England embarks on the conquest of France.

Writes Ando, "Oh! My Mother was the first work I made using a newly bought 16mm camera I had purchased with the writer Shuji Terayama in Paris. This piece was selected for the Oberhausen International Film Festival. In 1969, there were, of course, no video cameras like ones we see now, and color TVs were only found at broadcast television studios. I had just been employed at the TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System), and I often snuck into the studios after hours to experiment with the equipment. Oh! My Mother was made using the feedback effect, which is produced by infinitely expanding the image by looping the video."

Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Kurosawa's tightly paced, beautifully composed "Sanjuro." In this companion piece and sequel to "Yojimbo," jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan's evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a proper samurai on its ear.

A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and sake merchant Tokuemon to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men.

A story of revenge between two samurai families on the Igagoe Road. Araki Mataemon born in the province of Iga. He studied the art of the sword under the Yagyu family. He helped the younger brother of his wife Watanabe Kazuma take revenge on his enemy Kawai Matagoro. Ichikawa Utaemon plays Araki Matemon and his son Kinya Kataoji plays Kazuma.

When the bizarre mass suicide of 54 high school girls throwing themselves in front of a subway train appears to instigate a string of suicides around the country, Detective Kuroda strives to find the answer, which isn't as simple as he had hoped.

Wishing to find peace, Zatoichi travels to his old village but only finds trouble when he ends up in a love triangle and finds old scores have followed him home.

After arriving in the town of Shimonita, Ichi finds that a price has been put on his head by a local yakuza boss. He's drawn into a trap, but after hearing of the slaying of a former love, Ichi furiously fights his way through the entire clan to face the killer, a hired ronin.