Amanogawa
★ 6 · 2018 · 103m · Drama · Romance
High schooler Shiori lives with her education-minded mother. Struggling with her life in Tokyo, she travels on behalf of her grandmother to the mystical island Yakushima, where she meets a robot.
More Like This
Metropolis
1927 · ★ 8.1
In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city's mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
More info →
Dolls
2002 · ★ 7.5
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.
More info →
The Choice of Our Nation
2021
The referendum whether nuclear power plants should be banned has been held in Japan. People must decide their future.
More info →Oh! My Mother
1969
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."
More info →
The Great White Tower
1966 · ★ 6.9
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.
More info →
The Bridge on the River Kwai
1957 · ★ 7.8
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.
More info →
Lost in Translation
2003 · ★ 7.4
Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.
More info →
Seven Samurai
1954 · ★ 8.5
A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with food.
More info →
Zatoichi
2003 · ★ 7.2
Blind traveler Zatoichi is a master swordsman and a masseur with a fondness for gambling on dice games. When he arrives in a village torn apart by warring gangs, he sets out to protect the townspeople.
More info →
Mugonkan
2022
A story about how Kuboshima Seiichiro overcomes various difficulties to open Mugonkan, an art museum in Ueda City, Nagano Prefecture, featuring artworks by students before they were sent to fight in WWII.
More info →
Between Us
2021 · ★ 1
Kei longs for a “normal” life in rural Japan. But for a transgender man who is jobless in his own hometown, getting to normal is one steep climb, especially since Erin, his Canadian partner, longs to move to Tokyo, where they can live openly and freely. On his way to a job interview in the city, Kei meets a stranger. Abandoning his journey to help her, he discovers she is the owner of the hot springs—a place he once loved, as a child. Kei's encounter with the healing waters is complicated by Erin’s turning up as well. Finally, the couple—one on the men's side, the other, on the women's—must face the truth about their divergent wishes, identities, and murky notions of belonging.
More info →
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
2001 · ★ 7.1
David, a robotic boy—the first of his kind programmed to love—is adopted as a test case by a Cybertronics employee and his wife. Though he gradually becomes their child, a series of unexpected circumstances make this life impossible for David.
More info →