With no clue how he came to be imprisoned, drugged and tortured for 15 years, a desperate man seeks revenge on his captors.
Many loosely connected characters cross paths in this film, based on the stories of Raymond Carver. Waitress Doreen Piggot accidentally runs into a boy with her car. Soon after walking away, the child lapses into a coma. While at the hospital, the boy's grandfather tells his son, Howard, about his past affairs. Meanwhile, a baker starts harassing the family when they fail to pick up the boy's birthday cake.
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.
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.
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.
In Japan, scientifically advanced invaders from the war-destroyed planet Mysteroid cause an entire village to vanish, then send a giant robot out to storm the city by night, after which they request a small patch of land on Earth and the right to marry earthling women, claiming to be pacifists. Mankind must decide whether to capitulate or to resist.
Done with high school, a boy goes into exile in the mountains. His best friend, who hasn't found happiness in society, joins him.
Masaya is a university student, but he attends a school that's not his ideal school. His days are generally gloomy. One day, he receives a letter from serial killer Haimura. He was convicted for nine murders and received the death penalty. Back when Haimura was committing his murders, he ran a bakery store. At that time, Masaya was a middle-school student and a customer at his bakery store. According to the letter, Haimura confesses to having committed eight murders, but he insists that he did not commit the last murder. Masaya begins to investigate the last murder case involving Haimura.
Thirteen years after abandoning his wife and two sons by stepping out for a pack of cigarettes and never returning, deadbeat gambler Masato dies of stomach cancer. At his funeral, a motley crew of fellow mahjong players, pachinko parlor employees and former drinking buddies gather to pay their respects and tell stories, revealing aspects of Masato’s life that complicate his sons’ resentment towards him.
Fukami is a high school janitor whose father was a gangster. He works at the school as a janitor instead of belonging to the gang so he can watch out for Yui, the daughter of his deceased father's brother Majima Yoshiki. One day, a gang feud erupts and Yoshiki is killed. Yui becomes the next target.
Also known as the "Kobe earthquake," the massive earthquake struck the southern Hyogo prefecture on January 17, 1995 and resulted in more than 6,400 casualties. The drama will focus on the reporters working for the Kobe Shimbun, who were determined to keep the newspaper running without interruption, despite the damage suffered during the earthquake. The characters in the drama will all be based on real people, using their real names. Sakurai stars as the photo reporter Tomohiko Mitsuyama, who had joined Kobe Shimbun four years before the earthquake. The show will also have documentary segments such as interviews, including an appearance by Mitsuyama himself.
A bored accountant spots a beautiful woman in the window of a ballroom dance studio. He secretly starts taking dancing lessons to be near her, and then over time discovers how much he loves dancing. His wife, meanwhile, has hired a private detective to find out why he has started coming home late smelling of perfume.
When Taeil gets hired as a tailor's assistant, he dreams of becoming a fully-fledged tailor to be able to financially support his family. But he finds himself constantly reminded of the laborers' inferior working conditions. The young 22-year-old Taeil decides to confront the reality and become the flame of hope himself.
Various interconnected people struggle to survive when an earthquake of unimaginable magnitude hits Los Angeles, California.
Ryūichi and his small gang of Triad vie for control of the Japanese underworld in a crime-ridden Shinjuku quarter while Detective Jojima tries to bring it down.
At the strong insistence of his father, Ushimatsu Segawa conceals his origins from a “buraku” area of low-class “untouchables,” leaving his hometown to serve as an elementary school teacher where he excels and is loved by his students. But he constantly struggles with the secret of his low-birth status and is disturbed by all of the discrimination levelled upon his class. It prevents him from pursuing a romance with Shiho, whom he meets at the temple where he resides, but who descends from a samurai family.
After his young lover, Gitone, leaves him for another man, Encolpio decides to kill himself, but a sudden earthquake destroys his home before he has a chance to do so. Now wandering around Rome in the time of Nero, Encolpio encounters one bizarre and surreal scene after another.
In the summer of 1941, the United States and Japan seem on the brink of war after constant embargos and failed diplomacy come to no end. "Tora! Tora! Tora!", named after the code words used by the lead Japanese pilot to indicate they had surprised the Americans, covers the days leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, which plunged America into the Second World War.
Adapted from a manga and anime of the same name.
A Swiss nun falls in love with a Japanese engineer.