Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemployed, and with no family, he hopes to find a place to commit seppuku—and a worthy second to deliver the coup de grâce in his suicide ritual. The senior counselor for the Iyi clan questions the ronin’s resolve and integrity, suspecting Hanshirō of seeking charity rather than an honorable end. What follows is a pair of interlocking stories which lay bare the difference between honor and respect, and promises to examine the legendary foundations of the Samurai code.
Retainer
Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.
In the midst of an attempt to take over his company, a powerhouse executive is hit with a huge ransom demand when his chauffeur's son is kidnapped by mistake.
A young man believes that his country's leaders are actually toxic reptilian aliens sent down to launch a takeover of his beloved Earth. So he decides to abduct them and force the truth out on camera in his basement that doubles as a film studio and torture chamber.
Various experiences of childhood are seen in several sequences that take place in the small town of Thiers, France. Vignettes include a boy's awakening interest in girls, couples double-dating at the movies, brothers giving their friend a haircut, a boy dealing with an abusive home life, a baby and a cat sitting by an open window, a child telling a dirty joke, and a boy who develops a crush on his friend's mother.
Odd couple Ivo Salvini, recently released from a mental asylum, and former prefect Gonnella wander through the countryside and discover a dystopia made of television commercials, beauty pageants, rock music, Catholicism, and pagan rituals.
Ichiko bakes a cake for an end-of-year party with her friends. In the depths of winter, making mochi and curry keeps the people of Komori warm. Later, spring brings thoughts of her absent mother as well as rice planting and sakura, and she begins to think of leaving Komori behind again.
100 miles north, a bit east and up, is Pinchcliffe, the home of bicycle repairman Reodor Felgen and his two assistants, Solan Gundersen and Ludvig. Sponsored by oil sheik Ben Redic Fy Fazan, they build the car "Il Tempo Gigante" to race against Reodor's former assistant Rudolf Blodstrupmoen, who has stolen one of Reodor's inventions to become a world racing champion.
A man in a gleaming white suit comes to a small Southern town on the eve of integration. He calls himself a social reformer. But what he does is stir up trouble--trouble he soon finds he can't control.
Kresten, newly wed, is on the threshold of a great career success in his father-in-law´s company. But when the death of his own father takes him back to his poverty-stricken childhood home, far out in the country, his career plans fall apart. For one thing he has to deal with his loveable, backward brother, who is now all alone; for another, he meets a stunning woman who comes to the farm as a housekeeper, in disguise of her real profession as a call-girl.
A man awakes to find himself trapped in a dirty, confined crawlspace. He barely has enough room to move. He also has no memory of why he's there, or why he's bleeding from a stomach wound. Apparently drugged, he occasionally 'zones out' of his surroundings as he tries to edge towards his way to freedom. But the more he explores, the more pain he has to endure, and the more frightening his predicament becomes.
In a poet’s room, an armless statue abruptly comes to life. It invites the poet to step through a mirror and to discover another world. Strange places and characters present themselves to him. The poet tears himself away from these twisted fascinations and returns, with some difficulty, to his room.
A quartet of disaffected Korean youths have robbed a Seoul gas station. After taking the gas station over, their wacky antics ensue; forcing the manager to sing, kidnapping customers that complain about the service, and staging fist-fights between street gang members and gas station employees; all of these reflect their own gripes against society.
An insane surgeon's obsession with an actress leads him to replace her wounded pianist husband's hands with the hands of a knife murderer--hands which still have the urge to throw knives.
After years on the road establishing his reputation as Japan's greatest fencer, Takezo returns to Kyoto. Otsu waits for him, yet he has come not for her but to challenge the leader of the region's finest school of fencing. To prove his valor and skill, he walks deliberately into ambushes set up by the school's followers. While Otsu waits, Akemi also seeks him, expressing her desires directly. Meanwhile, Takezo is observed by Sasaki Kojiro, a brilliant young fighter, confident he can dethrone Takezo. After leaving Kyoto in triumph, Takezo declares his love for Otsu, but in a way that dishonors her and shames him. Once again, he leaves alone.
Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well to convey confidence, needing money for these expenses and for her demanding mother and brother, and knowing she's growing older.
Centres on Jeanne, a journalist tracking a mysterious rare herb that appears only once every 997 years.
Rich old Cyrus West's relatives are waiting for him to die so they can inherit. But he stipulates that his will be read 20 years after his death. On the appointed day his expectant heirs arrive at his brooding mansion. The will is read and it turns out that Annabelle West, the only heir with his name left, inherits, if she is deemed sane. If she isn't, the money and some diamonds go to someone else, whose name is in a sealed envelope. Before he can reveal the identity of her successor to Annabelle, Mr. Crosby, the lawyer, disappears. The first in a series of mysterious events, some of which point to Annabelle in fact being unstable.
Utamaro, a great artist, lives to create portraits of beautiful women, and the brothels of Tokyo provide his models. A world of passion swirls around him, as the women in his life vie for lovers. And, occasionally, his art gets him into trouble.
In late 1700s Korea, Lady Cho challenges the playboy Lord Jo-won into seducing and sleeping with her husband's coming young, virgin concubine. Lady Cho agrees to sleep with him if he succeeds.
An innocuous comment during a weapon inspection wounds the pride of low-ranking samurai Shinpachi, leading to an argument with his superior. The situation snowballs out of control, leading to a deadly duel and political fallout which threatens the entire clan. Declared mentally unstable by the corrupt authority, Shinpachi begins his descent into true insanity…
A parable on the life of two students, who used to spend their days sitting together in class. Now adults, one of them faces a rather bleak future.
The Tale of Genji Museum in Uji City, Kyoto will be airing a short film blending history and fantasy, the story follows a modern high school girl named Hana who is transformed into a cat and transported back in time. She travels 1,000 years ago to the Heian Era as portrayed in The Tale Of Genji, arguably the most famous novel in Japanese literature. Guided by the novel's titular character Hikaru Genji, Hana experiences firsthand the emotions that the author Murasaki Shikibu depicted in her novel. The short features scenes based on The Diary of Lady Murasaki and other historical materials, such as the real-life noble Fujiwara no Michinaga swiping early drafts of The Tale Of Genji because he could not wait to read chapters as Murasaki wrote them.
Katherine Whately, a tough, young Chicago cop, comes home to her small town to settle her teenage rape. She is welcomed by her brother but shunned by her father. Josh, the town doctor, is her only ally in her quest for the truth. Together Katherine and Josh find the bloody trail of a serial murderer and shatter the lie that is two decades old.
Ex-wrestler and Tennessee Sheriff Buford Pusser walks tall and carries a big stick as he tussles with county-wide corruption and moonshining thugs.
When George Tanner does business with high-ranking Yakuza Tono, Tono kidnaps his daughter, and George summons his old friend, private eye Harry Kilmer, to Japan to investigate.
The story of a teenage boy named Yu, who falls for Yoko, a girl he runs into while working as an "up-skirt" photographer in an offshoot of the porn industry. His attempts to woo her are complicated by a spot of cross-dressing – which convinces Yoko that she is lesbian – dalliances with kung-fu and crime, and a constant struggle with the guilt that's a legacy of his Catholic upbringing.
Amy, the young, friendless daughter of Oliver and Alice Reed, befriends her father's late first wife and an aging, reclusive actress.
A biker's brother is killed while investigating the kidnapping of a young boy, the byproduct of a war between two crime families. The biker vows to get revenge by finding the kidnapped boy and destroying the two families.
In the sixteenth century, Francis Barnard travels to Spain to clarify the strange circumstances of his sister's death after she had married the son of a cruel Spanish Inquisitor.
Mercenary Racier Panazio kills everyone standing in his way as he tried to find the murderer who killed his wife at the International Agricultural Show.
Two friends who work together at a Tokyo laundry are increasingly alienated from everyday life. They become fascinated with a deadly jellyfish.
Residents of a rundown boardinghouse in 19th-century Japan, including a mysterious old man and an aging actor, get drawn into a love triangle that turns violent. When amoral thief Sutekichi breaks off his affair with landlady Osugi to romance her younger sister, Okayo, Osugi extracts her revenge by revealing her infidelity to her jealous husband.
Masaki, a baseball player and gas-station attendant, gets into trouble with the local Yakuza and goes to Okinawa to get a gun to defend himself. There he meets Uehara, a tough gangster, who is in serious debt to the yakuza and planning revenge.
Office worker, Adam, quits work to return to his childhood home and settles into the comforts of his parent's backyard. A chance meeting with a friend from his past leads to them making a "Things to Do" list so they can fulfill some of their childhood dreams.
Biscut is a powerful film on the state of politics in Uttar Pradesh and offers a gritty and hard-hitting take on the treatment of the backward classes and their never-ending exploitation in the caste-dominated political landscape of Uttar Pradesh.
In the 15th century Richard Duke of Gloucester, aided by his club-footed executioner Mord, eliminates those ahead of him in succession to the throne, then occupied by his brother King Edward IV of England. As each murder is accomplished he takes particular delight in removing small figurines, each resembling one of the successors, from a throne-room dollhouse, until he alone remains. After the death of Edward he becomes Richard III, King of England, and need only defeat the exiled Henry Tudor to retain power.
A man joins forces with a Vietnam veteran to take revenge on his father, the most powerful drug lord on the border, who he blames for his mother's fall from grace.
A young man named Ángel decides to take revenge for the murder of his parents, committed at the hands of hitmen hired by a businessman. Due to the difficulty of knowing exactly who was responsible for the murder of his parents, he decides to end the The life of all the hit men there is, until he ends the last one, and he does it together with several friends who are also driven by the murder of their relatives.
Don Birnam, a long-time alcoholic, has been sober for ten days and appears to be over the worst... but his craving has just become more insidious. Evading a country weekend planned by his brother and girlfriend, he begins a four-day bender that just might be his last - one way or another.