Movies: Nenji Kobayashi

After a passenger ship sinks in 1954, Go Akutsu devises a life-saving project in the form of a tunnel under the Tsugaru Strait. While working on this project Akutsu becomes involved with Tae Makimura leading to his estrangement from his wife....

A war widow determined to clear the name of her disgraced husband, who was court-martialed for desertion and executed. Official records have been destroyed, and the ministry that distributes benefits continues to deny her a pension. Twenty-six years ...

In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit ...

Once again we focus on Nami Matsushima. This time she has a sister who goes missing and after getting too caught up in doing something about it, our innocent heroine is given a fifteen year sentence for a murder she didn't commit. She's sent to an al...

The story centers on a man who loves movies, having once worked at movie studio in pursuit of his dreams, surrounded by great directors and famous actors. In this tale of love and friendship spanning a lifetime, the "god of cinema" that Go has worshi...

Japanese film icon Ken Takakura, who has starred in over 100 films, stars in this elegiac look at war and remembrance. Hideji Yamaoka (Takakura) was a suicide pilot during the war who somehow survived Japan's surrender. After decades of working as a ...

Joji Kano is a loose cannon cop from backwoods Okinawa, sent to Tokyo to investigate the grizzly murder of an Okinawa woman. As he probes deeper into the sleazy world of flesh-peddling, talent agency corruption and mob influence, Kano uncovers the sh...

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During the fervently nationalist months leading up to World War II, a rebellious teenager is transferred to a new primary school in a small Inland Sea town. He vies with the school’s reigning bully, who takes a romantic interest in his older stepsist...

Eiji lives a quiet life running a small Izakaya with his wife. He spends his days cooking for and serving the lively residents of his small hometown....

Four people are discovered brutally murdered in an up-scale high-rise apartment. All the victims appear to be family, but as the investigation deepens it is discovered that one of the victims isn't related to the family....

The great Bunta stars as a gangster who is sent to jail for the sake of his gang, but when he’s released he finds everything completely changed and his gang has swept him aside for being too violent. He tries to start a new life with his two ”brother...

"Tsubaki Sanjuro" is a remake of Sanjuro (1962) by Akira Kurosawa. Sanjuro returns with sharper, faster, subtler sword, talking and perception. He uses them to settle the trouble and uses them good!...

After a desperate gang of ex-soldiers and gamblers meet in a fistfight in occupied Ginza they decide to make the neighborhood their own....

Yukio is an ex-farmer working as a dump-truck driver in Kashima. Haunted by the drowning of his two young sons, whose names he has had tattooed on his back in penance, and locked in a sibling rivalry with his traditional but urbane younger brother wh...

Hama-chan’s sales department gets a new supervisor, a hard-working taskmaster that’s the very opposite of carefree, irresponsible Hama-chan. The veteran employee decides to find his boss, a divorced father, a new wife. The supervisor loves a bar host...

A Japanese teenager travels to New Caledonia in search of the fabled "island closest to heaven" that her late father had told her about....

After serving time, a defiant street thug is incensed to find his town overrun by two yakuza factions. He gathers his crew and takes them on....

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A trio of young scientists investigate a source of uranium at the base of a sacred mountain, and after running over a dog, find themselves cursed by the locals....