Late Spring is a 1949 black and white film drama directed by Yasujirō Ozu and starring Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara. Many consider this extremely chaste film between a father and his marriageable daughter his finest achievement. The story concerns Noriko, who lives happily with her widowed father and seems in no hurry to get married. Her father, a professor, however, wants to see her settled and conspires with his sister to trick Noriko into pursuing an arranged marriage. Continue reading »
Cure is a 1997 psychological thriller/horror directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and starring Koji Yakusho and Masato Hagiwara. Police detective Kenichi Takabe is investigating a series of bizarre murders. Though each victim is killed the same way, with an X mark carved into their chests, the perpetrator seems to be different every time. In every case the murderer is caught close to the scene of the crime, and though they readily confess to committing the murder, they often have no motive and cannot adequately explain what drove them to kill. Continue reading »
Dark Water is a 2002 J-horror directed by Hideo Nakata and starring Hitomi Kuroki, Rio Kanno. It involves a woman, Yoshimi Matsubara, who, in the midst of an unpleasant divorce, moves to an eerie, run-down apartment building with her young daughter, Ikuko. The ceiling of their apartment has a dark and active leak. Yoshimi discovers that the upstairs apartment, which appears to be the source of the leak, was formerly the home of a young girl named Mitsuko Kawai, who was of similar age to her daughter. The child had attended the same kindergarten Ikuko now attends. Mitsuko was abandoned by her mother and vanished more than a year ago. She also had owned a red bag which was the same bag that Ikuko found on the apartment roof when first viewing the apartment. Continue reading »
Tomie will Not die: While investigating a murder of a high school student named Tomie the lead detective tracks down a schoolmate suffering from amnesia who can’t remember anything that happened 3 months prior to Tomie’s death and she starts to suspect the cause of her amnesia is supernatural. She also suspects there is something odd going on next door with her new neighbor who is rearing a peculiar creature. Over the span of a week the creature grows into a beautiful teenage girl who responds to the name Tomie can’t die. Continue reading »
Dark Tales of Japan is a collection of short horror movies by Japan’s best horror directors (Yoshihiro Nakamura, Norio Tsuruta, Kôji Shiraishi, Takashi Shimizu, Masayuki Ochiai) each racing to reach the outer limits of fear! The horrifying episodes are The Spiderwoman, Crevices, The Sacrifice, Blond Kwaldan and Presentiment.
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If you like J-Horror you’ll love Underworld, an anthology of six spooky stories.
Chain Mail: Friends of Sayaka get their kicks sending out hoax e-mails with the name of one of their classmates who killed herself due to bullying. Sayaka feels guilt for her failure to stop the hoax. But her friends die one after the another under mysterious circumstances. That is when Sayaka receives an e-mail with a picture of herself killed. Continue reading »
Drunken Angel is a 1948 Kurosawa movie starring Takashi Shimura as an alcoholic doctor in postwar Japan who treats a young, small-time hood named Matsunaga (Toshirō Mifune), after a gunfight with a rival syndicate. The doctor diagnoses the young gangster with tuberculosis, and convinces him to begin treatment for it. The two enjoy an uneasy friendship until the gangster’s former boss is released from prison and seeks to take his gang over once again. The sick young man then stops following the doctor’s advice, slips back into old habits and threatens to kill him, while his life is further endangered by his gangster lifestyle. Continue reading »
Shall We Dance? is an immensely popular 1996 movie starring Kôji Yakusho & Tamiyo Kusakari and directed by Masayuki Suo.
The film begins with a close-up of the inscription above the stage in the ballroom of the Blackpool Tower: “Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear”, from the poem Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare. As the camera pans around the ballroom giving a view of the dancers, a voice-over explains that in Japan, ballroom dancing is treated with suspicion. Continue reading »
Earth is invaded by evil aliens from another galaxy. Their attack is stopped by the mighty force of prehistoric monster Gamera. The aliens scan Gamera’s brainwaves to discover and exploit his only weakness. By taking two young boys hostage they are able to seize control of the monster and use his powers against the Earth. As Gamera ravages the cities of Japan the two children struggle to escape freeing him from the the aliens’ command and provoking a deadly final battle between space monsters and Earth’s colossal defender. Starring Kojiro Hongo & Toru Takatsuka; directed by: Noriaki Yuasa.
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The Street Fighter is a 1974 martial arts movie starring Sonny Chiba and directed by Shigehiro Ozawa. Chiba plays martial arts master for hire Takuma Tsurugi who comes to the rescue of a kidnapped heiress. Continue reading »