Baragaki: Unbroken Samurai

The ever versatile Kazuki Kitamura stars as masterless samurai Kyutaro Madarame, a feared swordsman who has fallen on hard times in old Edo. Caught between two warring gangs in an epic battle of cat lovers and dog lovers, he begrudgingly accepts the canine faction's offer to assassinate the opposite leader's beloved pet: an adorable white cat. Yet upon raising his lethal sword, he cannot bring himself to go through with the act, and the cat melts his ronin heart. But before finding peace as a newly minted cat person, the still fearsome Madarame will have to take on both gangs in a classic samurai street brawl.

A room in a fancy downtown apartment. The evening orgy kicks off with eight men and women meeting for the first time, including an unemployed guy who pays the 20,000 yen party fee with money from his parents, and a female college student whose run-of-the-mill appearance hides a voracious sexual appetite.

Sawa Yamagishi worked as a nursing-care helper. The family for an old man asked Sawa to sleep with him, which led her to lose her job. Now, she has nowhere to go. Sawa finds elderly people in trouble and gets involved in their lives. Meeting them, Sawa's own wounds start to heal.

In 1957 Budapest, one year following the failure of the Hungarian Revolution, a 12-year-old Jewish boy whose mother has raised him to believe that his father will return from the camps has his hopes shattered when a brutish stranger appears on the doorstep to take his family back.

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."

Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an aging warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons.

The story contrasts the life of two doctors, former classmates and now both assistant professors at Naniwa University Hospital in Osaka. The brilliant and ambitious surgeon Goro Zaizen stops at nothing to rise to a position of eminence and authority, while the friendly Shuji Satomi busies himself with his patients and research.

A young Tokyo businessman joins an online movie forum and develops a special bond with one of its members through back and forth e-mails.

During the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, a postman poses as a photo developer, helping Japanese forces while secretly sheltering Chinese refugees. He later risks his life evacuating them and revealing evidence of the atrocities.

Rei Kiriyama is a 17-years-old shogi (Japanese chess) player. He debuted as a professional shogi player when he was in middle school. He lives by himself in Tokyo, because his parents and younger sister died in an traffic accident when he was little. One day, Rei Kiriyama meets three sisters who are his neighbors. The three sisters are Akari Kawamoto, Hinata Kawamoto and Momo Kawamoto. This is his first meeting with someone outside of the shogi world in many years. Having meals with the Kawamoto family brings warm feelings to Rei Kiriyama. As Rei Kiriyama continues his shogi career, his interactions with his neighbors allows him to grow as a shogi player and as a person.

The story of Yoshinaka during the tumultuous period of warring related to us in the Heike Monogatari. Close in setting to Kinugasa’s famous Gate of Hell (1953).

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.

When a powerful new Makamou attacks and defeats Hibiki, Asumu dives into Takeshi’s history and discovers a book that details the ancient Oni and a boy sharing his name. As he reads on, he learns of the tensions between humans and Oni as they struggle to stop the Orochi Makamou, but will he discover the key to defeating the new Orochi in the present?

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 Tokyo college student is attacked by a ghoul, a super-powered human who feeds on human flesh. He survives, but has become part ghoul and becomes a fugitive on the run.

A court fortune-teller loses his mind after a conspiracy leads to the death of his lover. Hope appears to be on the horizon after he becomes romantically involved with his dead lover's twin sister, but more complications arise thanks to a chance encounter with a clan of shape-shifters.

Akira Kurosawa's lauded feudal epic presents the tale of a petty thief who is recruited to impersonate Shingen, an aging warlord, in order to avoid attacks by competing clans. When Shingen dies, his generals reluctantly agree to have the impostor take over as the powerful ruler. He soon begins to appreciate life as Shingen, but his commitment to the role is tested when he must lead his troops into battle against the forces of a rival warlord.

Chiba appears seven days before a person dies an unexpected death. His job is to observe the person for seven days then decide either to ‘execute’ or ‘pass over’. Today, again, in the rain, he waits. His subject, her death due in seven days, is Kazue Fujiki. She works for a manufacturing company in the complaints department. Exhausted after her day, she emerges from her office. It’s time for the Reaper to go to work.

An American with a Japanese upbringing, Chris Kenner is a police officer assigned to the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles. Kenner is partnered with Johnny Murata, a Japanese-American who isn't in touch with his roots. Despite their differences, both men excel at martial arts, and utilize their formidable skills when they go up against Yoshida, a vicious yakuza drug dealer with ties to Kenner's past.

In the grip of a famine, a farmer must provide for his starving family, however his desperation is exploited by a mischievous being, that tempts him with something precious.