

On November 25th 1970, a man committed ritual suicide inside the Tokyo headquarters of the Japanese Ministry of Defence, leaving behind a legacy of masterpieces and a controversy that echoes to this day. The man was Yukio Mishima, one of Japan's greatest and most celebrated novelists. With four members of his own private army - the Tatenokai - Mishima had taken the commandant hostage and called upon the assembled military outside the Ministry to overthrow their society and restore the powers of the Emperor. When the soldiers mocked and jeered Mishima, he cut short his speech and withdrew to the commandant's office where he committed seppuku - the samurai warrior's death - tearing open his belly with a ceremonial knife before being beheaded by one of his colleagues. What was Mishima truly trying to express through his actions? And what did he witness during his final moments?

On November 25th 1970, a man committed ritual suicide inside the Tokyo headquarters of the Japanese Ministry of Defence, leaving behind a legacy of masterpieces and a controversy that echoes to this day. The man was Yukio Mishima, one of Japan's greatest and most celebrated novelists. With four members of his own private army - the Tatenokai - Mishima had taken the commandant hostage and called upon the assembled military outside the Ministry to overthrow their society and restore the powers of the Emperor. When the soldiers mocked and jeered Mishima, he cut short his speech and withdrew to the commandant's office where he committed seppuku - the samurai warrior's death - tearing open his belly with a ceremonial knife before being beheaded by one of his colleagues. What was Mishima truly trying to express through his actions? And what did he witness during his final moments?
2012-05-20
5.2
7.8A fictional account of the life of Japanese author Yukio Mishima, combining dramatizations of three of his novels and a depiction of the events of November 25th, 1970.
7.4A guilt-haunted samurai warrior attempts to stop a massacre taking place.
6.0A look at the relationship between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his early supporter and eventual colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and how the website's growth and influence led to an irreparable rift between the two friends.
7.0The neglected common-law wife of a Japanese librarian is repeatedly harassed by a young man with a heart condition who seduces her with the prospect of a better life.
8.4Down-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.
6.7A young girl lives in the Outer Hebrides in a small village in the years just before WWI. Isolated and hard by the shore, her life takes a dramatic change when a terrible tragedy befalls her.
6.4Beatrice Prior must confront her inner demons and continue her fight against a powerful alliance which threatens to tear her society apart.
6.7The Words follows young writer Rory Jansen who finally achieves long sought after literary success after publishing the next great American novel. There's only one catch - he didn't write it. As the past comes back to haunt him and his literary star continues to rise, Jansen is forced to confront the steep price that must be paid for stealing another man's work, and for placing ambition and success above life's most fundamental three words.
6.7During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.
6.4Set against the backdrop of the succession of Queen Elizabeth I, and the Essex Rebellion against her, the story advances the theory that it was in fact Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford who penned Shakespeare's plays.
5.9A reporter, fired after refusing to give names to a 1951 House Un-American Activities Committee, takes a part-time job as companion to an old lady. While working she overhears a noisy argument in the neighboring house, being conducted largely in German and involving her HUAC prosecutor. She begins to investigate, enlisting the help of the FBI Agent initially detailed to surveil her.
6.2The true story of Madalyn Murray O'Hair -- iconoclast, opportunist, and outspoken atheist -- from her controversial rise to her untimely demise.
6.7It’s 1940, and the population of Japan is divided over its entry into World War II. Satoko, the wife of a fabric merchant, is devoted to her husband but is beginning to suspect he’s up to something. Soon she allows herself to be drawn into a game in which she enigmatically conceals her intentions.
6.1Pete Bell, a college basketball coach is under a lot of pressure. His team isn't winning and he cannot attract new players. The stars of the future are secretly being paid by boosters. This practice is forbidden in the college game, but Pete is desperate and has pressures from all around.
6.2A pro ball player with a substance abuse problem is forced into rehab in his hometown, finding new hope when he gets honest about his checkered past, and takes on coaching duties for a misfit Little League team
6.6In 1923, teenager Kim Shun-Pei moves from Cheju Island, in South Korea, to Osaka, in Japan. Along the years, he becomes a cruel, greedy and violent man and builds a factory of kamaboko, processed seafood products, in his poor Korean-Japanese community exploiting his employees.
7.2Struggling to elevate himself from his low caste in 17th century Japan, Miyamoto trains to become a mighty samurai warrior.
7.7When fifteen-year-old Tyson attends public school for the first time, his life is changed forever. While helping his father clean up after the football team, Tyson befriends champion marathon runner Aklilu. Never letting his autism hold him back, Tyson becomes determined to run his first marathon in hopes of winning his father's approval. With the help of an unlikely friend and his parents, Tyson learns that with faith in yourself and the courage to take the first step, anything is possible.
7.1After 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.
6.9After her anti-fascist professor father is dismissed, Yukie navigates love, political repression, and wartime upheaval—ultimately forging her own path in pre- and post-WWII Japan.
7.9101-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story of her life aboard the Titanic, 84 years later. A young Rose boards the ship with her mother and fiancé. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson and Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets aboard the ship. Rose tells the whole story from Titanic's departure through to its death—on its first and last voyage—on April 15, 1912.
7.1A Pulitzer-winning writer grapples with being a widower and father after a mental breakdown, while, 27 years later, his grown daughter struggles to forge connections of her own.
1.0Herrmann is a leftist Thirty Something, who is still politically active, despite beginning to live the usual life of having a girlfriend and a child. On the way to his weekly political meeting he is kidnapped.
7.7Manhattan explores how the life of a middle-aged television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.
5.9An aspiring designer from the slums of Chicago puts herself through fashion school in the hopes of becoming one of the world's top designers. Her ambition leads her to Rome spurring a choice between the man she loves or her newfound success.
6.3Portrait of the last days of the life of Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco.
7.2Joy and Hope McGregor run Two Sisters Ranch upstate New York with their dad and longtime friend. When a handsome stranger comes to town to find inspiration to get over writer's block, he learns how special Christmas on the ranch really is.
6.1The lives of Ted and Marion Cole are thrown into disarray when their two adolescent sons die in a car wreck. Marion withdraws from Ted and Ruth, the couple's daughter. Ted, a well-known writer, hires as his assistant a student named Eddie, who looks oddly similar to one of the Coles' dead sons. The couple separate, and Marion begins an affair with Eddie, while Ted has a dalliance with his neighbor Evelyn.
6.8The relationships of two couples become complicated and deceitful when the man from one couple meets the woman of the other.
7.0Blank-faced bug killer Bill Lee and his dead-eyed wife, Joan, like to get high on Bill's pest poisons while lounging with Beat poet pals. After meeting the devilish Dr. Benway, Bill gets a drug made from a centipede. Upon indulging, he accidentally kills Joan, takes orders from his typewriter-turned-cockroach, ends up in a constantly mutating Mediterranean city and learns that his hip friends have published his work -- which he doesn't remember writing.
0.0Oli wants to finish her book. Jo wants to get over her breakup. What they don't want is to share a house.
6.5Humiliated and down on his luck, a superintendent turns his life around when he decides to write a book.
7.2Writer Paul Benjamin is nearly hit by a bus when he leaves Auggie Wren's smoke shop. Stranger Rashid Cole saves his life, and soon middle-aged Paul tells homeless Rashid that he wouldn't mind a short-term housemate. Still grieving over his wife's murder, Paul is moved by both Rashid's quest to reconnect with his father and Auggie's discovery that a woman who might be his daughter is about to give birth.
8.1In 1987 Korea under an oppressive military regime, the unlawful interrogation and death of a college student ignite ordinary citizens to fight for the truth and bring about justice.
7.1A henpecked housewife ekes out a meager existence, surrounded by a host of colorful characters: her ungrateful husband, her delinquent sons, her headstrong mother-in-law, and her sex worker neighbor, among others.
6.9A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.
6.9Parisian bon vivant, World War II Resistance fighter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, philandering husband and recluse…Samuel Beckett lived a life of many parts. Titled after Beckett’s famous ethos “Dance first, think later”, the film is a sweeping account of the life of this 20th-century icon.
7.0A down-on-his luck writer meets a movie producer, who asks him to write a screenplay on the condition that he visit locations for the film. Chaos ensues.
6.4Estranged siblings reunite after years apart, forced to confront unresolved tensions and reevaluate their strained relationships with their emotionally distant parents.