Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, "Rashomon" is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of justice. Through an ingenious use of camera and flashbacks, Kurosawa reveals the complexities of human nature as four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.
Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.
A Japanese Yakuza gangster's deadly existence in his homeland gets him exiled to Los Angeles, where he is taken in by his little brother and his brother's gang.
Frustrated with her mundane life, a Tokyo office worker becomes obsessed with a fictional movie that she mistakes for a documentary. Fixating on a scene where stolen cash is buried in North Dakota, she travels to America to find it.
Turbulent life of Kiwa, the successor of the most prominent yakuza in Osaka, the Domoto Clan.
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.
Sumi Muraoka, nicknamed "Sumi Banten", due to the fact that her back is decorated with a tattoo of the goddess Banten, the woman who heads the Banten Yakuza family. She comes into confrontation with a powerful of Yakuza group Mutsumi-kai, seeking to capture all power in their hands.
A sensual coming-of-age drama direct — It depicts a precarious relationship between a homosexual woman and a man who was picked up by her and ends up living with her
The story of three brothers who, after loosing their parents in the Great Kanto Earthquake, continued their respective yakuza family business and the revenge of the youngest one when his siblings were killed by a rival vicious yakuza boss. The first in the two part Daimon series.
Former hitman Ginya Yabuki (Riki Takeuchi) left the mafia and split somewhat contentiously with his longtime former partner. Years later, that same ex-partner has emerged as the head of a very dangerous crime syndicate and Yabuki is forced to confront his former partner, which may start an all-out war within the Tokyo Mafia.
Ten years after his greatest triumph, Yabuki has lost the Mafia that was once his to rule. But when a young gangster comes to him for guidance, he discovers that the old rage still burns. It's time for Yabuki's final stand and one last blaze of glory!
A retired contract killer goes on a bloody rampage when a young girl finds herself at the mercy of gangland human traffickers and only one man can come to her rescue, with an arsenal of weapons and years of experience in the art of killing.
The legendary one-eyed one-armed swordsman Tange Sazen is back to aid a Magistrate in his efforts to steal bribe money on its way to Edo for the benefit to poor farmers.
Furuta Oribe is ordered to become tea master under Toyotomi Hideyoshi after his teacher Sen no Rikyū, the former tea master, was ordered to commit suicide. Princess Goh, daughter of the lord but adopted by Hideyoshi, is outraged when Rikyū's severed head is thrown in the Nijo River. She sends Usu, Oribe's servant, to retrieve the head and deliver it to Rikyū's adopted daughter.
A filmmaker plays with diary-docu and fiction as his camera joins his ventures into a phone dating club. Bored to death, hormones running, and desperately wanting to talk to someone his own age (preferably a girl), he walks into a local phone dating club. Can he hook up with someone? Borrowing the form of a diary-movie, the director unfurls an unpredictable and imaginative look into his own persona. 8mm experimental film by Murakami Kenji, the film that made his name.
Betrayed and disgraced, big-city reporter Kazuya Mizuno is banished to a desk at Kaname's boring little town newspaper. But Kaname isn't as boring as it seems on the surface. Not with characters around like Shimeko, a girl genius with a childlike lack of propriety, and her ace fisherman/folk-singer dad. Or the overbearing and unpleasant local Shinto priest, a former Christian cultist. Or Endo, Kazuya's new colleague, a bitter drunk after his son's suicide. Or Kin, a former terrorist, now a hermit on his boat engaging in secret "research." Or perhaps most importantly Teruko, the hypnotically beautiful bar owner, the focus of all manner of innuendo and intrigue. Something mysterious, even mystical, is going on Kaname, and hapless Kazuya is about to be thrown into the middle of it.
Set in 900AD and tells the story of a famous female writer of the time, Murasaki Shikibu. Her story begins from the death of her husband, a Japanese noble, then moves on to her recruitment to train the Prince's young 'wives in waiting'. It is dotted throughout and actually composed mainly of one of the fictional stories she wrote, the tale of Genji. Genji is a rich playboy who falls in love and has a son to his stepmother. He falls in love often and has many wives whom are all completely subservient to him.
Teruo Ishii portrays the bitter conflict over the right to develop land in a gripping and humorous way. Nakagami, the head of the Kanto Joseikai, is ordered to acquire the rights to work to level the reclaimed land and prevent the Doshikai from expanding from Kansai into Tokyo, but the interference of the Koda-gumi, associated with the Kansai Doshikai, intensifies. Nakagami's younger brother Hayami, unhappy that the situation is moving slowly, tries to blackmail the mayor into moving forward, but... A true Toei gangster film with an all-star cast including Koji Tsuruta and Ken Takakura!